Through Death To L-ipe 

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REUEN THOMAS DO. 









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THROUGH DEATH TO LIFE 


Discourses on 


ST. PAUL’S GREAT RESURRECTION CHAPTER 


BY 

REUEN THOMAS, D.D. 

Harvard Church, Brookline , 

Author of “ Divine Sovereignty,” “ Grafenburg People,” Etc. 



” V,» 

BOSTON 



SILVER, BURDETT & COMPANY 
50 Bromfield Street 


LONDON 

JAMES CLARKE & COMPANY 
13 Fleet Street 
1888 







Copyright, 1888, 


By Silver, Burdett & Co. 



Typography by J. S. Cushing & Co., Boston. 


Presswork by Berwick & Smith, Boston. 



TO THE MEMORY 


OF MY DEAR FRIENDS, 

The Rev. WILLIAM ROBERT PERCIVAL, 

Mrs. RICHARD JOLLY, Mrs. WILLIAM KEYTE, 

Mr. JOHN FRASER AND Mr. THOMAS MUSCUTT, 
WHO, during their too brief residence here on earth, 

MADE SO MANY HOURS OF MY LIFE DELIGHTFUL, 

I DEDICATE THESE DISCOURSES. 


“He (Emerson) believed in quotation, and borrowed from 
everybody and every book. Not in any stealthy or shamefaced 
way, but proudly, royally, as a king borrows from one of his 
attendants the coin that bears his own image and superscrip¬ 
tion.”— O. W. Holmes. 


“ The greatest is he who has been oftenest aided.” — Ruskin. 


PREFACE. 


These expository discourses have been publicly uttered 
from the pulpit in the regular course of my ministry. They 
are printed because so many persons who have been bereaved 
have expressed to me their deliberate judgment that they 
are likely to be helpful to a wider audience than that which 
listened to them. I have thought it undesirable to make 
detailed references to the literature of the subject, or to the 
learned men whom I have consulted in the preparation of 
these sermons. Quotation marks all over a page are a dis¬ 
figurement. Paragraphs will be found which probably owe 
even their structure to others. But it is enough that the 
sermons are at least as much my own as Shakespeare’s 
dramas are his. It may be as well to state that I have 
derived help in the direction of verifying exegesis from 
Bengel, Alford, Wordsworth, Bishop Ellicott, Dr. A. M. 
Fairbairn, Professor Godet, Dr. Gloag, Rev. H. Burton, Dr. 
Oswald Dykes, Rev. J. A. Best, Dr. S. Cox, Rev. W. J. 
Deane, Canon Westcott, Dr. George Matheson, the great 
old book, West on the Resurrection, Canon Farrar, Dr. E. 
H. Plumptre, F. D. Maurice, F. W. Robertson, Dr. D. R. 
Goodwin (in Smith’s Dictionary of the Bible), Leo. H. 
Grindon, Dr. Hanna, Rev. E. H. Sears, and others. My 


6 


PREFACE. 


great aim was to present and enforce what to me was mani¬ 
festly Paul’s teaching in the great Resurrection chapter. If, 
tried by modern standards, Paul is heretical, that is no bus¬ 
iness of mine. Of course, if I had been writing prelections 
for a class-room, the form would have been entirely differ¬ 
ent. All I have aimed at is to “ give the sense ” of St. Paul 
in a way suited to the necessities and competencies of a 
listening Christian assembly. 


R. T. 


CONTENTS. 


PAGE 

I. Historical. 2 

II. Personal. 29 

III. The One Generic Fact .43 

IV. The Life-Bringer. 59 

V. Baptism for the Dead.75 

VI. The Resurrection Body. 91 

VII. Earth to Earth. 103 

VIII. The Great Transition. 119 

IX. The Sting of Death. 134 

X. Certain Reward.147 












































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I. 

HISTORICAL. 




“As thinkers, mankind have ever divided into two sects,— 
Materialists and Idealists; the first class founding on experi¬ 
ence, the second on consciousness; the first class beginning to • 
think from the data of the senses, the second class perceive that 
the senses are not final, and say, the senses give us representa¬ 
tions of things, but what are the things themselves they cannot 
tell.” — Emerson. 

“I have heard that wherever the name of man is spoken 
the doctrine of immortality is announced; it cleaves to his 
constitution.” — Emerson. 


I. 


HISTORICAL. 


I Cor. xv. 1-9. — Now I make known to you brethren, the gospel 
which I preached unto you, which also ye received, wherein also ye 
stand, by which also ye are saved; I make known, I say, in what 
words I preached it unto you, if ye hold it fast, except ye believed in 
vain. For I delivered unto you first of all that which also I received, 
how that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures; and that 
he was buried; and that he hath been raised on the third day accord¬ 
ing to the Scriptures; and that he appeared to Cephas; then to the 
twelve, then he appeared to above five hundred brethren at once, of 
whom the greater part remain until now, but some are fallen asleep; 
then he appeared to James; then to all the apostles; and last of all, 
as unto one born out of due time, he appeared to me also. 

This fifteenth chapter of the First Epistle to the 
Corinthians seems to me to be a kind of synopsis 
of the teachings of the Great Apostle of the Gen¬ 
tiles. So many of the greatest questions which can 
be asked are introduced, that if we were to follow 
its thoughts from end to end we should travel over 
ground as varied and interesting to us mentally as 
Switzerland would be to us physically. I have often 
wished to do that which I am about to attempt ; 
viz. to investigate the teachings of the Apostle Paul 


12 


THROUGH DEATH TO LIFE. 


as given in this chapter. We read it at funerals, 
but whether we understand it is doubtful. It appeals 
powerfully to our imagination — speaking as it does 
of death and resurrection, of victory over death, and 
of immortality. If we were to use the language of 
mere critics, we should be inclined to say that in 
this chapter St. Paul had put forth all his strength, 
that if we wish to meet him when he is at his best 
we must encounter him on this field. Here we 
have the reasoner, the thinker, the man of vision, 
the teacher. Here we have him face to face with 
heresy and heretics. At one time he has his feet 
on the ground of well-attested historical fact. At 
another time he is soaring, eagle-like, into the most 
brilliant splendor of the out-poured radiance of reve¬ 
lation. 

The most thoughtful men in our churches of 
to-day must perceive that we are in danger of a 
merely emotional religiousness. We need not only 
Christians of good intentions and right feeling, but 
Christians who are intellectually instructed, who 
are too robust to be scared out of their faith by 
bold and thoughtless sceptics, however energetic and 
dogmatic they may be in their denials. A faith that 
is half doubt is necessarily a most sickly kind of 
faith. A ship that after every bit of a voyage has 
to be put into dock for repairs is ever in danger 


HISTORICAL. 


13 


of sinking. And a faith that is not intellectual as 
well as emotional can hardly stand the tossings and 
tumblings of these storm-swept days in which we 
live. 

In the confidence that a close critical study of 
what the Apostle Paul has taught us in this chapter 
will strengthen our faith, by illumining our under¬ 
standings, and thus brightening our hope, I ask you 
to join with me in the prayer for the influences of 
the Holy Spirit of God to rest upon and enter our 
spirits, that we may receive with meekness that 
word of God which is able to save our souls. 

First of all, let us try to get some correct idea of 
the condition of the people to whom St. Paul ad¬ 
dresses this letter. They lived in Corinth, a city of 
Greece having a most remarkable situation. It was 
on a narrow neck of land between two converging 
bays. It had the names of “ the bridge of the sea ” 
and “ the gate of the Peloponnesus.” It held the 
key to that beautiful southern part of Greece which 
stretches out like a mulberry leaf into the blue Medi¬ 
terranean. 1 Overlooking the city was a vast citadel 
of rock, rising to the height of two thousand feet 
above the sea-level. From this eminence one of the 
most impressive views in the world could be had. 
The mountains of the Morea, the snowy heights 

1 See Smith’s Dictionary of the Bible. 


14 THROUGH DEATH TO LIFE. 

of classical Parnassus, the Saronic Gulf with its 
islands, even the Acropolis of Athens, forty-five 
miles off, could be distinctly seen; and then to 
add tenderness and beauty to the grandeur and 
majesty of the mountain scenery, there was not 
only the ever-varying smile of the ever-varying sea, 
but a wide table-land with vine-clad terraces sloping 
to the glinting and glistening bays stretching to 
east and west. Beautiful for situation was Corinth ! 

To this city came people from all the surrounding 
region. Every kind of Jew and every kind of Gen¬ 
tile was found there. It was a place as distinguished 
for its mental activity as for its commercial enter¬ 
prise, a place as distinguished for its wealth as for 
its licentiousness. Here a Christian church was 
founded by Paul himself. This church was after¬ 
wards visited by Silas and Timotheus, and here 
Paul made the acquaintance of Aquila and Priscilla. 
Here, also, the eloquent Apollos ministered. The 
church was also noted for the growth of party 
spirit; so varied a membership could not soon be 
brought into unity. But as out of evil good so 
often comes, so in this case. No letters are so 
varied and so practical, no epistles so fervent and 
eloquent, as these to the church at Corinth. From 
them the whole Christian world knows what the true 
ecclesiastical spirit is as it was illustrated in Paul. 


HISTORICAL. 


15 


It was not a spirit of faction and division, but the 
precise opposite. Moreover, the very heresies of the 
people gave the occasion for those parts of the epis¬ 
tle which are most profound in their teaching and 
most eloquent in their utterance. In opposition # to 
the spirit of faction, Paul asserts the ground of 
ecclesiastical unity. In opposition to the Sadducean 
spirit of some of the members of the church, he 
proclaims the great doctrine of personal immortality, 
in continuing and unbroken consciousness, for all 
believers in Jesus. Such was the general state of 
that Corinthian church when Paul addressed to it 
this letter. It was a church divided into factions 
and disturbed by heresies. 

How did Paul act toward it? Did he call a 
council and advise the expulsion of some of the 
members ? Not at all. He had formerly insisted 
on the expulsion of a member who had married his 
own father’s wife. That, said the Apostle, is intol¬ 
erable. Hold no fellowship with that man. But on 
matters of heresy and faction he pursued an entirely 
different course. He did not demand the expulsion 
even of members who denied the doctrine of per¬ 
sonal immortality. Strange as that may seem, it 
was a fact, — showing the large tolerance of the 
Apostle. But neither did he let them alone. He 
poured around them, as in this fifteenth chapter, 


16 THROUGH DEATH TO LIFE. 

such a flood of light that they must have perceived 
how entirely they had misapprehended the teachings 
of Christianity. He sought diligently to instruct them, 
and thus to convert them to the truth. If we are 
clearly to understand why the Apostle wrote as he 
did,—why thus and not otherwise, — it is necessary 
to acquaint ourselves with the views of the body 
and its relation to the soul held by the men of that 
day. That which men believed was coming to them 
with the Messiah was chiefly a regenerated condition 
of society; a new kingdom — a new order of things 
— prosperity and purity. Many persons came into 
the Christian Church with that hope. But more than 
this, these persons had certain views and opinions 
as to the cause of evil. They associated it with the 
material body. To be liberated from the body was 
everything. When any one spake of “ resurrection 
of a body,” they could not accept it, because in this 
flesh and blood, so they assumed, dwelt all the evil 
to which they were subject. And so they were in 
danger of what we may call an ultra-spiritualism, 
which ultra-spiritualism naturally runs into antino- 
mianism and asceticism, with other evil conditions. 
This was their mental state; this was what the 
philosophy of their time taught them socially. They 
lived in that wealthy and licentious Corinth, — with 
its feuds and factions, arising out of the variety of 


HISTORICAL. 


1 7 


people there; mentally they had been taught that all 
evil belonged to a flesh-and-blood body, and that to 
be disembodied was to be, in that act, liberated from 
sin and evil. And when St. Paul spoke to them of 
resurrection, they said: “Yes; whenever society is 
regenerated, there is a resurrection.” 

Now the Apostle saw clearly, as we must see, that it 
was necessary, once and for all, to grapple with these 
mental difficulties, because one error leads to another. 
If men do not believe in continued, personal exist¬ 
ence in an embodied state, their ideas of a future 
life and of immortality become so shadowy as to 
mean nothing. Before we get through this chap¬ 
ter, we shall see exactly what the Apostle taught, 
and what he did not teach. We must patiently 
follow him step by step. It will be a good lesson 
for us, showing us that there is only one Christian 
way of dealing with “heretics,” — a hard and ugly 
word. All error is founded on some truth. Men 
who think are always liable to think wrongly, i.e. 
inadequately, but better that than no thinking at all. 

No men are more unpromising, morally and intel¬ 
lectually, than they who are too lazy to do any think¬ 
ing, who shelter themselves under the platitudes “that 
one thing is as good as another,” and “that all views 
and opinions have something good in them”—that 
“ providing you do as well as you can, you will come 


18 THROUGH DEATH TO LIFE. 

out all right.” We have no warrant in the New Tes¬ 
tament for treating even such frivolous people with 
the contempt they justly deserve. Man is here to 
search for truth, and to search till he finds it. When 
he has found it, his reward, mentally and spiritually, 
will be great. And he will enjoy it all the more 
that he has had to search for it. Our God is not a 
foolish father who endows his son with a fortune, 
and keeps him thus in guilty idleness, parent of 
every form of vice, all his days. He puts us upon 
searching for truth. Thus he trains and develops 
our minds into power and competency for the dis¬ 
covery of still higher and profounder truth. The 
only Christian way to deal with error and heresy is 
to present the truth. 

“ Mild light and by degrees should be the plan 
To cure the dark and erring mind; 

But who would rush at a benighted man, 

And give him two black eyes for being blind? ” 

The fifteenth chapter of the First Epistle to the 
Corinthians is Paul’s great sermon to heretics within 
the Corinthian church. He does not call for their 
expulsion, but for their instruction. So should it be 
always and ever. 

How does he go about this business of instruction ? 
First of all, he lays a firm foundation in historical 
and well-attested facts. The gospel he had preached 


HISTORICAL. 


19 


to the Corinthians was not simply a philosophy, or a 
set of opinions, or a set of doctrines. It was founda- 
tioned on nothing short of facts so abundantly at¬ 
tested that they would pass for what they were in 
any court of law. The facts are summarized in these 
few words : “ Christ died for our sins, according to 
the Scriptures; he was buried; he was raised again 
the third day.” These are the simple historical facts. 
Then the Apostle proceeds to summon his wit¬ 
nesses. First, Cephas ; then “ the twelve ” — one ab¬ 
sent ; then five hundred brethren in one great crowd ; 
then James; then all the Apostles — no one absent; 
“and last of all, as unto one born out of due time, 
he appeared to me also.” 

Paul puts a case supported by evidence which 
would have been received in any court of law in the 
wide sweep of the Roman Empire. 

This testimony of his is not given a long while after 
the event, but while most of those who could be put 
on the witness-stand and sworn were living. And in 
the church of Corinth there was no attempt to in¬ 
validate the evidence. On the other side they had 
no case. All they could say was that these wit¬ 
nesses were mistaken: they thought they saw Jesus 
in his resurrection body; but it was a vision only. 
The answer to which is, Find in all history a case 
of a dozen men all being in such a subjective state 


20 


THROUGH DEATH TO LIFE. 


that they all saw the same vision, or dreamed the 
same dream, at the same time. If that is difficult, in¬ 
deed impossible, find us an instance of five hundred 
men who at the same time were so exactly alike, 
mentally and affectionally, that they all dreamed the 
same dream or saw the same vision. The Society for 
Psychical Research never, I believe, receives the un¬ 
corroborated testimony of one person, that he saw “ a 
ghost,” or heard a noise in a haunted house. But if 
three separate persons are similarly affected as to 
their perceptions, they admit that there must have 
been some external object affecting them. If we had 
the testimony of Mary Magdalene only, or of Peter 
only, or of James only, or even of Paul, while their 
lives would compel us to believe that there was no 
moral doubt that each of them saw Jesus, and while 
the four together would give a case of the strongest 
possible probability, yet, at some time or other, each 
might have been in so exceptional an ecstatic state 
of mind that the subjective became as if it were ob¬ 
jective ; they mistook the vivid and picturesque dream 
for an actual outside personage. The case would 
break down when Paul was put on the stand, for 
he had never seen Jesus of Nazareth, and could 
not conceive what he was like. With Peter and 
James, seeing Christ singly and alone, the difficulty 
of proving the objectiveness of the vison would be 


HISTORICAL. 


21 


much greater. But when the appearance is to 
eleven, and then to twelve, and afterwards to five 
hundred — no case is in existence of five hundred 
men ever dreaming the same dream at one time, or 
seeing the same vision at one time, — in each case 
there must have been the objective appearance. In 
a word, the historical fact of the Resurrection in 
human form of Jesus of Nazareth after his crucifixion 
had ample and convincing attestation. St. Paul will 
accept no other view of the case. 

There is other evidence to be had that the Apostle 
Paul had been very laboriously careful in searching 
into all the facts about this Jesus of Nazareth, after 
he had his own vision on the way to Damascus. I 
think if it were wise and proper for me, here in this 
place, to carry you on a tour of critical investigation, 
that it would not be difficult to establish the strong 
probability that Paul had not only (during those three 
years in which he was in Arabia) laboriously compared 
the accounts of Jesus with the old Jewish prophecies 
about the Messiah, but that he had done more. There 
is enough of intimation scattered up and down the 
New Testament in the Apostle’s movements and in 
his words, to lead us to infer that he personally ex¬ 
amined the witnesses. In the Epistle to the Gala¬ 
tians, i. 18 , St. Paul distinctly states that he went 
up to Jerusalem to find Peter, and abode with him 


22 


THROUGH DEATH TO LIFE. 


fifteen days. Is it conceivable that those two men 
could be together fifteen days, and Paul not use the 
time in getting at the facts about the Resurrection 
from Peter, the first witness he calls ? 

There is also strong probability that he, during 
those fifteen days, got to know all that other Apos¬ 
tles had to tell of the Resurrection facts. To show 
further the thoroughness which characterized the in¬ 
vestigations of this man of Tarsus, when he writes 
to these Corinthians, quoting historical evidence, 
and especially the very remarkable evidence that 
Jesus appeared on one occasion to as many as 
five hundred brethren, he uses language which 
suggests that he had verified* that fact also, and 
knew the most of the five hundred, or how could 
he say of them, “ of whom the greater part remain 
to this present, but some are fallen asleep” ? As if 
he should say to these people in Corinth : “ Exam¬ 
ine for yourselves; I can give you the names of the 
men. I can tell you who of them are still living, and 
where they live, and who of them have passed away.” 
Paul seems to know each of these brethren. He has 
been observing the life of each, and the death of 
each. He has been keeping hold of the chain of 
witnesses, and marking when any link was severed 
by the grave. After giving the experiences of 
others, he gives his own, and he puts it in the same 


HISTORICAL. 


23 


category with the other evidences. It was of the 
same kind to him personally — an objective historical 
fact. 

Now, why is it so important that we should recog¬ 
nize the emphasis which St. Paul puts on the histori¬ 
cal character of the fact of the Resurrection ? It is 
important because when once we get away from the 
facts of Christianity we are not like a ship at sea, 
with captain and crew and chart and compass, — the 
stars above, the deep below, — but “ like a painted ship 
upon a painted ocean.” In the early days of the 
Christian Church, and in our day, there have been 
men of the Sadducean order who have been very will¬ 
ing to accept what they call “essential Christianity.” 
They like Christianity as a sentiment, as a feeling, as 
an ideal of life. So far, so good. But they doubt 
the historical facts and the supernatural miracles. 
The latter are myths; the former, the mere allegori¬ 
cal scaffolding which you can take down when once 
you have your Christian ideals and Christian senti¬ 
ments and feelings afloat in society. 

Doubtless you have met with men and women who 
assume intellectual superiority and much of poetical 
sensibility, but who seem to have no backbone of 
conviction to their religiousness. There is a great 
deal of that sort of temperament to be found. They 
tell you, “ We have all that is essential in Christian- 


24 


THROUGH DEATH TO LIFE. 


ity; we believe in the Fatherhood of God, we believe 
that we are all the offspring of God, we believe in a 
Divine Spirit influencing the spirit of man, and we 
believe in a real, though perhaps not in the vulgar 
popular sense, personal immortality. In all essentials 
we are Christian.” In the Corinthian church there 
were people of that order, and yet it was with the 
purpose to prevent their doing the harm that they 
were certain to do that the Apostle wrote these 
words. All religiousness that does not gather round 
a great personal centre, occupying itself simply with 
an ideal that is abstract, and with sentiments and 
feelings, is unreliable. It lacks fixity. It lacks 
strength. It lacks courage. It is weak and vacil¬ 
lating. We see it in the Positivists and Agnostics of 
our own day as much as in the Sadducees of Corinth. 
Christianity as represented by the author of “ Litera¬ 
ture and Dogma ” is not New Testament Christianity. 
It is not the Pauline Christianity. Paul’s Christianity 
was something more than a collection of moral pre¬ 
cepts and prohibitions, something more than Mat¬ 
thew Arnold’s “ kindness and pureness,” “ charity 
and chastity.” In order to keep that which is ideal 
we must keep that which is historical. The ideal of 
Christianity is found in no one but the historical 
Christ. If we lose him, we lose it. “He is the 
brightness of the Father’s glory, and the express 


HISTORICAL. 


25 


image of his person,” — he and none other. As one 
has eloquently phrased it, “ By historical Christianity 
we mean not any abstract truths, but those truths as 
actually existing in the life of Jesus Christ; not 
merely the truth that God is our Father, but the 
belief that though “no man hath seen God at any 
time, yet the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom 
of the Father, he hath declared him not merely 
the truth of the Son ship of our humanity, but that 
there is One-above all others who, in the highest and 
truest sense, is the only begotten Son of God; not 
merely that goodness and spiritual excellence is the 
righteousness which is acceptable in God’s sight, but 
that these are not mere dreams and aspirations of 
our humanity, — that they are actual realities, and 
have truly existed here below in the life of One, the 
man Christ Jesus ; not merely the abstract law of 
self-sacrifice, but the real Self-Sacrifice, — the one 
atoning Sacrifice which has redeemed the whole 
world.” Now to this historical Christianity the 
Apostle bears the strongest testimony when he 
comes to these facts, that Jesus Christ (after his 
Resurrection) had been seen by Cephas, and the 
other Apostles, by five hundred brethren at once, and 
by himself. 

The human heart needs something more than 
creeds, doctrines, aspirations, ideals; it needs a 


2 6 


THROUGH DEATH TO LIFE. 


Divine Person in whom it can believe, in whom it 
can rest, in whom it can hope. Creeds, doctrines, 
aspirations, ideals alone, are like those fairy folk we 
see floating about in some midsummer night’s dream 
— unreal and insubstantial. It is when the flesh-and- 
blood Jesus Christ — the man of Nazareth, the man 
of Calvary — comes into our life, dies for our sins, 
that he may deliver us from them, and rises over 
death that he may be our Rescuer from Death, 
that we are satisfied. When he comes, we are at 
home with him. He seems one of us — what we 
are destined to be. Our hearts rest in him, and 
our lives are renewed by his presence. 


PERSONAL. 


“The more faithfully we can represent to ourselves the life, 
outward and inward, of St. Paul, in all its fulness, the more 
unreasonable must appear the theory that Christianity had a 
mythical origin; and the stronger must be our ground for 
believing his testimony to the divine nature and miraculous 
history of our Redeemer.” 

CONYBEARE AND HOWSON’S St. Paul. 


II. 

PERSONAL. 


i Cor. xv. 9. — I am the least of the apostles, that am not meet 
to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. 

We need to notice, as a separate theme, this intro¬ 
duction, by the Apostle, of himself and his own expe¬ 
rience into this chapter. What does it mean — this 
self-depreciation — this using of so abject a term as 
that in the eighth verse about himself — a term much 
more abject (ectroma) in the Greek than it appears 
in the English ? What does it mean ? This self¬ 
depreciation and then this self-appreciation ? Why 
does the Apostle introduce himself here so dejected 
— so elated ? What has it to do with the narrative ? 
Does it add to it ? Does it strengthen it ? Is it re¬ 
quired ? Is it necessary ? When a writer like this, 
a man with so much delicacy of soul, says, “as to my¬ 
self,” you may be sure that there is something im¬ 
pressive to follow. It is as if he should say, Could 
anything but the truth borne in upon my soul with 
irresistible and overwhelming evidence have changed 
me from what I was to what I am ? Then he con- 


30 


THROUGH DEATH TO LIFE. 


trasts himself with himself — Saul the persecutor of 
the Church of God with Paul the Apostle. He 
suggests to them to account for the change if they 
can in any other way than that the risen Christ ap¬ 
peared to him. And so, in himself and in the entirely 
new direction of his life, he is a proof of the Resur¬ 
rection of Christ of no mean order. If the other 
Apostles have a right in this narrative, so has he. If 
their testimony was admissible, so was his. An 
apostle was a man who had seen the Lord. Paul 
had seen the Lord, or he was not an apostle. That 
he had seen him was evident, for he had been a 
recipient of the grace of God — of the strength of 
God — of the sustaining power of God —• in labors that 
were abundant; so abundant as to give him the first 
rank as a laborer. What could have changed Saul 
the persecutor to Paul the seraphic missionary — the 
man who had been in deaths oft — the man who had 
been stoned — been shipwrecked — been beaten 
with rods — been in prisons and dungeons — what 
could have produced so great a change ? Something 
must have done it; something adequate to account 
for the subjugation of this imperious nature — this 
fiery will — this man capable of such sublime conse¬ 
cration, who was total and entire in what he did — 
no half-heartedness about him; a man of learning, 
of scholarship, of great intellectual force, of all-con- 


PERSONAL. 


3 


suming zeal, great in heart, great in intellect, great 
in executive power, a man capable of the sublimest 
consecration; what could have changed him from 
Saul who persecuted the Church of God, Saul who 
assisted at the murder of Stephen, to Paul who valued 
his life only because he could pour it out in the ser¬ 
vice of Jesus the Christ ? He had not been reasoned 
into this; he had not been bribed into it, unless ship¬ 
wreck, stoning, castigations, dungeons, deaths, are of 
the nature of bribes. There was everything to lose 
(so far as this world was concerned) and nothing to 
gain. Some cause must be found for this change. 
None of the other Apostles could give a reason. 
They were, for a while, doubters. No one outside 
the band of the Apostles could account for it. There 
is nothing to explain to us why and wherefore the 
persecutor of the Church became its sublimest and 
most seraphic apostle except that given by Paul him¬ 
self. The risen Christ appeared to him and claimed 
him for his own. Thus the case of Paul, from its very 
uniqueness, becomes one of the most important links 
in this chain of evidence which encircles the great 
fact of the Resurrection of Jesus. 

Moreover, it was impossible for the Apostle to be 
silent when witnesses were called, as he said before 
Agrippa, that at the time of his conversion Christ 
expressly signified to him that his very purpose in 


32 


THROUGH DEATH TO LIFE. 


appearing to him was thereby to constitute him “ a 
witness,” able to testify to the world on the very 
ground of his having then seen the Lord. Silence 
on the question that he himself was an independent 
witness of equal value with the rest, he would have 
regarded as treasonous. 

But then when he is giving his testimony, as he 
contemplates the truth rising ever into grander mag¬ 
nificence before his vision, he is seized with shame 
and self-contempt and he says, “I, — a mere abortion 
of a man, — I, the least of the Apostles, that am not 
meet to be called an apostle, because I persecuted 
the Church of God, to me this Christ of God ap¬ 
peared.” The more he knows of Christ, the more he 
loathes that old self. He regards it with contempt 
and abhorrence. “That Jesus should show himself 
alive after his passion to the eleven and other be¬ 
lievers, who had previously loved and followed him, 
and that they should receive the ennobling commis¬ 
sion which authorized them to bear witness to their 
risen Lord, was one thing: they might boldly bear 
their testimony and feel no shame. But that a man 
who, at the time when Christ disclosed himself to 
him, was fanatically blaspheming his name and perse¬ 
cuting those beloved followers of his whose names he 
had just been reciting, that he should put himself for¬ 
ward by their side to assume this supremely honor- 


PERSONAL. 


33 


able function of witnessing as an apostle of Christ to 
his Resurrection, and this, too, on the precise ground 
of a manifestation of himself made to rebuke and arrest 
that guilty career of his, that the writer might feel 
would strike some at least, as a piece of effrontery be¬ 
speaking a most strange unmindfulness of the com¬ 
plexion of his own previous life.” But silence would 
be cowardice. And whatever there was in the nature 
of this Apostle Paul, cowardice there was none. Ever 
and always he stood to his convictions. As Saul, he 
was zealous and brave. As Paul, the same. Now, 
among the virtues which make manliness, courage 
ranks high. Indeed, it may be affirmed that there is 
no manliness without courage. To say the thing he 
felt about himself and about Christ demanded in Paul 
courage amounting to heroism. To say that when 
he persecuted Stephen the martyr, and the Church 
of God, he was most entirely wrong, and to affirm 
that this Christ had'appeared to him, that Jesus was 
the Messiah predicted in the Scriptures, that he was 
God’s Christ, — to say this always and everywhere, 
and take the consequences, demanded courage of the 
very first order. No braver man than Paul ever 
breathed the breath of life. 

It is a mistake to suppose that modesty and self¬ 
depreciation indicate a lack of courage. It is pro¬ 
verbial that a bully is generally a coward. Modesty 


34 


THROUGH DEATH TO LIFE. 


and self-depreciation may get the better of courage. 
Many a man has been much less than he ought 
to have been because of his self-depreciation, 
because he shrank from doing the thing which, 
at a particular time, he ought to have done. And 
that may become a habit. Thus a man’s natural 
ability of usefulness may amount almost to a 
cypher through want of a little courage. It is as 
Rev. Sidney Smith has said: “A great deal of 
talent is lost in the world for want of a little 
courage. Every day sends to their graves a num¬ 
ber of men who have remained in obscurity because 
their timidity has prevented them from making a 
first effort. The fact is, that to do anything in 
this world worth doing, we must not stand back 
shivering and thinking of the cold and danger, but 
jump in and scramble through as well as we can. 
It will not do to be perpetually calculating risks 
and adjusting nice chances; it did very well before 
the flood when a man could consult his friends 
upon an intended publication for one hundred and 
fifty years, and then live to see his success after¬ 
wards ; but at present a man waits, and doubts, 
and consults his brother and his particular friends, 
till one fine day he finds he is seventy years of 
age, that he has lost so much time in consulting 
his first cousins and particular friends that he has 
no more time to follow their advice.” 


PERSONAL. 


35 


We may take the case of this Apostle and so 
use it that it shall be of great worth to us in the 
way of light and guidance. 

What are we to do when a new conviction conies 
into our life — a conviction, it may be, which puts 
us into collision with our former self? Paul had 
thought that Christianity was a new heresy; that 
these men who followed Jesus of Nazareth were 
impostors; that the most odious form of persecu¬ 
tion was all that they deserved. He was sincere 
and zealous in all this ; but as he was on his way 
to Damascus, armed with the authority of the civil 
power, he met Christ Jesus. The Risen Lord 
appeared to Saul with the question, “ Saul, Saul, 
why persecutest thou me ? ” No thunder out of a 
clear sky ever was so startling and unexpected 
as this vision, and this question. He had run up 
against a great fact,—that Jesus was alive. What 
was he to do with it? 

Let us remember that nothing addressed to the 
mind, to the heart, to the reason, to the conscience, 
is irresistible in the sense that a man is compelled 
thenceforth to act upon it. There is always room 
for disobedience. That fact was recognized by 
Paul. When he appeared before King Agrippa 
he made distinct recognition of this liberty that 
remained to him in the words, “I was not disobe- 


3 6 THROUGH DEATH TO LIFE. 

dient to the heavenly vision.” He had the liberty, 
the power, to be disobedient, but not the will. When 
the light came he followed it. 

And of what nature was his following ? Was it 
excited and impulsive ? Did he go straight into the 
battle with error and sin ? No; he went into three 
years of silence in Arabia. There, without doubt, 
he studied the Old Testament Scriptures afresh. 
And when he came forth from his retirement, he 
had found that these very Scriptures did speak of 
this very Christ. When once the fact of this 
Jesus being alive had been put beyond all possible 
doubt, then, in the light of that fact, he had to 
examine all his knowledge afresh. And that meant 
deliberation. It meant pause, retirement, solitude. 
And so he' went into Arabia, — with the old 
prophets afid teachers in his hand, and the Spirit 
of God as his tutor. Not till after that retirement 
was he ready to speak intelligently, and with his 
heart and conscience all saturated with the new 
views of God and his relation to men. I think 
that there is a needful suggestion here for our¬ 
selves in these modern days. Often and often, 
with great want of 'Visdom (so it seems to some 
of us), have men been set to public preaching to 
others immediately after, in some revival meeting, 
their emotions have been stirred and confession 


PERSONAL. 


37 


of Christ as their Lord been publicly made. And 
the more of badness there has been in the previous 
life, the more notorious the men have been, the more 
needful it has seemed by their advisers that their 
case should be made public. In the light of the 
retirement into Arabia of the great Apostle of the 
Gentiles, I am compelled to make confession of 
my belief that such sudden precipitancy of an 
untried man upon the public is all wrong. If any 
such men have gifts which can be utilized, let them, 
ere using those gifts, go into some Arabia for three 
years and get to know themselves. Unless a man’s 
conviction is able to go into retirement for three 
years and grow, it is not of much account. 

But, then, say some, think of the time that would 
be lost! Souls may be converted in that time. 
Good may be done. Was there ever a time when 
a great man like Paul was so much needed as in 
those early days of Christianity ? Here was a man 
of the very highest order of endowment, a man of 
great natural gifts, a man of burning zeal, a man 
linguistically and philosophically educated, and yet 
he must go into the desert solitudes where no man 
was for three years. In the silence of continued 
meditation he must get acquainted with himself and 
with his God as revealed to him in Christ Jesus! 

And still another thought. In all of us there 


38 


THROUGH DEATH TO LIFE. 


are, struggling contradictory feelings and tenden¬ 
cies. This passage, in which the Apostle represents 
himself as an abortion of a man and not meet to 
be called an Apostle, and yet glories in his abun¬ 
dant labors, confessing the grace of Christ in him, 
is it not very much what we find in ourselves ? There 
are people who appreciate themselves intellectually 
who are constantly depreciating themselves relig¬ 
iously. “ I am not worthy to be a church member, — 
a Christian disciple.” What pastor does not have 
to encounter that again and again ad nauseam ? 
What preacher who does not at times, and sin¬ 
cerely say within himself: “ I am only an abortion 
of a man, I am not worthy to be called a preacher.” 
But as Paul had to be an Apostle, notwithstand¬ 
ing his self-depreciation, so you and I have to be 
that to which we are called, or deny the Christ of 
God as an all-sufficient Saviour. It would be an 
act of deliberate disobedience, if I, feeling my utter 
unworthiness to be a preacher of the Gospel, should 
yet refuse to do it when I am called, inasmuch as 
I believe, intellectually and heartily, that Jesus is 
God’s Christ, and came to be man’s Redeemer and 
Saviour. But is it not equally an act of deliberate 
disobedience on the part of some of you to refuse 
to confess Christ before men, simply because you 
feel that you are not worthy to do it? Ought St. 


PERSONAL. 39 

Paul’s inward conviction of his own utter unworthh 
ness to have kept him from being the Apostle that 
he was ? And ought our inward feelings of 
unworthiness to keep us from confessing Christ 
before men ? Most assuredly not. The same 
spirit that enlightened him can enlighten us. 
The same power that sustained him can sustain 
us. What presumption to affirm, even to suspect, 
that Christ is not able to keep us in the faith! 
What limiting of the power and goodness of the 
Son of God! What limiting of the grace of the 
spirit! The rebellion of the Israelites of old showed 
itself, how? “They limited the Holy One of Israel.” 
They said, “ Can God prepare a table in the wilder¬ 
ness?” In a word, Can He provide for us? 
And that is exactly what some of you are doing 
who don’t confess Christ before men. You deliber¬ 
ately prefer the voice of your own timidity, of your 
own self-depreciation, of your own sense of unworthi¬ 
ness to Christ’s call. What else is it, but deliberate 
continued disobedience ? If ever there was, in this 
world, a man who might have justified himself in 
shrinking from his future, it was Paul. That which 
was before him was tremendous in dire possibilities. 
But he went into it and trusted God to care for 
him and keep him. And that is the only course 
open to us,—to go ahead, believing that God is 


40 


THROUGH DEATH TO LIFE. 


ahead all the time. No private Christian, no min¬ 
ister, no apostle, can make progress or get satis¬ 
faction on any other principle, or in any other 
way. 

Yea, I will tell you something else: the farther 
along Paul got, the more he knew experimentally 
of God’s love and grace, the worse he felt — the 
* more humiliated I mean — that he had ever been 
a persecutor of Christ’s disciples. “ Only think! 
think of it!” (I hear him say), “I actually perse¬ 
cuted this Christ, that Stephen with the angel 
face, those meek men and women who only wanted 
to be allowed to love and serve him on whom 
their heart was set! ” He felt mean enough. And 
when he called himself no full-grown man, but only 
an ectroma , an abortion of a man, so long as he 
was in that state, he meant it. 

The practical immediate outcome of this passage, 
so far as we are concerned, is simply this : Do not 
allow your sense of unworthiness to have more 
control over your action than the call of Christ. 
Do what you see ought to be done in the light of 
the fact that Jesus is God’s Christ; able to care 
for you; able to sustain you; able to do more than 
you can ask or even think; able to keep you from 
falling, and to present you faultless before the pres¬ 
ence of his glory with exceeding great }oy. 


THE ONE GENERIC FACT. 


“ I trust I have not wasted breath; 

I think we are not wholly brain, 

Magnetic mockeries ; not in vain, 

Like Paul with beasts, I fought with death. 

“Not only cunning casts in clay : 

Let science prove we are, and then 
What matters science unto men, 

At least to me ? I would not stay. 

“ Let him, the wiser man who springs 
Hereafter, up from childhood shape 
His action, like the greater ape, 

But I was born to other things.” 


Tennyson. 


THE ONE GENERIC FACT. 


I Cor. xv. 12-19. — Now if Christ is preached that he hath been 
raised from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resur¬ 
rection of the dead ? But if there is no resurrection from the dead, 
neither hath Christ been raised: and if Christ hath not been raised, 
then is our preaching vain, your faith also is vain. Yea, and we are 
found false witnesses of God, because we witnessed of God that he 
raised up Christ: whom he raised not up, if so be that the dead are 
not raised. For if the dead are not raised, neither hath Christ been 
raised: and if Christ hath not been raised, your faith is vain; ye are 
yet in your sins. Thru they also, which are fallen asleep in Christ, 
have perished. If in this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of 
all men most pitiable. 

One of the most learned of English critics writes 
thus of the historical truth of the Resurrection 01 
our Lord: — 

“ The letters of St. Paul are amongst the earliest, 
if not actually the earliest, writings in the New Tes¬ 
tament. Of these, one important group has been rec¬ 
ognized as certainly genuine even by the most seep* 
tical critics. No one doubts that the Epistles to the 
Corinthians, Galatians, and Romans were composed 
by St. Paul, and addressed to the churches whose 
names they bear. Nor is there much uncertainty as 


44 


THROUGH DEATH TO LIFE. 


to the date at which they were written. The most 
extreme opinions fix them between a.d. 52-59; that 
is, under no circumstances more than thirty years 
after the Lord’s death. There can then be no doubt 
as to the authority of their evidence as expressing the 
received opinions of Christians at this date, and there 
can be no doubt as to the opinion itself. In each of 
the Epistles the literal fact of the Resurrection is 
the implied or acknowledged groundwork of the 
Apostle’s teaching. The very designation of God is 
‘He who raised up the Lord from the dead.’ In this 
miracle lay the sum of the new revelation, — the sign 
of Christ’s sonship. To believe this fact and confess 
it was the pledge of salvation. On many points there 
was a diversity of judgment among the Apostles, and 
a wider discrepancy of belief among their professed 
followers, but on this there is no trace of disagree¬ 
ment. Some, indeed, questioned the reality of our 
own resurrection, but they were met by arguments 
based on the Resurrection of Christ which they ac¬ 
knowledged. Whatever else was doubted, this one 
event was beyond dispute.” 

We cannot appreciate the Apostle’s argument in 
this chapter, or feel its full force, except as we recog¬ 
nize that it is built on an undisputed fact, — that of the 
literal historical Resurrection of our Lord. That ad¬ 
mitted, and demonstrated by evidence of the com- 


THE ONE GENERIC FACT. 


45 


pletest kind, then what ? The foundation is laid; 
now for the building. There were, in the Corinthian 
Church, some who doubted not Christ’s Resurrection 
but their own. Their minds had been so trained and 
schooled in the philosophies of their day that when 
Paul spake of the resurrection or the regeneration 
of men they immediately put a different meaning 
into the words from that which he intended, — a 
meaning similar to that which some of the men of 
our day intend when they talk of the elevation and 
regeneration of society. They mean, simply, the 
bringing men into a more intellectual condition, into 
a more amiable and charitable mood towards one 
another, —peace on earth, good-will towards men, that 
simply and solely. It cannot be denied that among the 
men of the past, whom we call “ Stoics and Ascetics,” 
there were illustrations of spiritual and unselfish 
men — men of whom Socrates was the type — men 
who lived for an ideal virtue and goodness. That 
cannot be denied. But no mere idealism, no mere 
philosophy, has ever done much for the elevation of 
the great masses of the people. No one can deny 
the excellency of much which Emerson has written. 
The mind of Emerson was saturated with the Chris¬ 
tianity in which he had been born and nurtured. 
But even with this, if we had nothing to guide us 
except that which Emerson has left, ninety-nine out 


46 


THROUGH DEATH TO LIFE. 


of every hundred people would remain untouched 
by any influence which could renew them. The sub¬ 
tler-minded literary people would read him, and be 
enlarged, but the many would remain altogether out¬ 
side his influence. Now, in St. Paul’s day, there was 
a tendency to separate religious sentiment from his¬ 
torical fact, — to reduce even Christianity to a philos¬ 
ophy. There is the same tendency now. It is illus¬ 
trated in the works of the most scholarly writer of 
fiction this century has produced. No one can re¬ 
fuse to recognize the glorification of unselfishness in 
“George Eliot’s ” books. Everywhere the mystery of 
our existence is illumined and ennobled by the suffer¬ 
ers and cross-bearers. She has given us, too, a most 
exquisite poem on immortality, but she does not 
mean what Paul meant by that word, —personal im¬ 
mortality beyond the grave. “ George Eliot’s ” books 
need only to have inserted into them the historical 
Christ and personal immortality, and immediately 
they become Christian. There is nothing nobler in 
spirit to be found anywhere than some of her charac¬ 
ters. If they are as castles in the air, they are castles 
noble in architecture, beautiful in symmetry. They 
lack a foundation adequate to support and sustain 
them. That is all; but it is a defect of the gravest 
kind. Any religion which is simply a combination of 
sentiment and philosophical abstraction is unenduring. 


THE ONE GENERIC FACT. 


47 


It has no backbone to it. It is not sunlight poured 
out from the sun, but only aurora borealis. It needs 
permanent eternal facts to sustain it. No form of 
religion can last which has not underneath it these 
permanent historical facts. So felt Paul; and when 
he would save the Corinthian Church from becoming 
a school of philosophy, he laid the foundation of his 
great argument in a fact which could not be success¬ 
fully refuted. 

In the passage I have read as our text, it is nec¬ 
essary to observe how the Apostle assumes that, in 
this Jesus of Nazareth, there is the same humanity 
as in ourselves. He is not something different from 
ourselves, only something more. Our nature is in 
him, and so our destiny is in him. That which is 
true of him is true of us. As to the Resurrection, 
one case proves it. If Christ has been raised, there 
is a resurrection of the dead; if there be no resur¬ 
rection of the dead, Christ has not been raised. I 
would have you observe very carefully this assump¬ 
tion of the Apostle: that the Christ nature and our 
nature is the same, and that what is true of him is 
true of ourselves. Everything in this great argu-' 
ment hangs on the fact that, in all but sin, Christ 
Jesus is our brother, according to the flesh and 
according to the spirit. Whatever will come to him 
will come to us. Wherever the head goes, the body 


48 


THROUGH DEATH TO LIFE. 


has to go. The same life is in the body as in the 
head; the same blood in the brain as in the feet. 
Christ and his people are one; one in nature, there¬ 
fore one in destiny. 

But supposing this Jesus be not raised from the 
dead, supposing he has not opened the gateway into 
immortality, what then ? 

i. As to the Apostles, what? 2. As to the ordi¬ 
nary disciples, what ? 3. As to those which are 

fallen asleep, what ? 

1. As to the Apostles, . we are “false witnesses,” 
—false, not simply mistaken ; we are liars, the whole 
twelve of us; we have said again and again, “We 
saw him after his Resurrection ” ; he spoke to us ; he 
gave us commission to go into all the world. Peter 
heard him say, “ Lovest thou me ? ” Three times he 
heard him ask the question. Three times he got the 
answer, “Feed my sheep”; “Feed my lambs.” I, 
Paul, heard him ask, “ Why persecutest thou me ? ” 
And I said, “ Who art thou, Lord ? ” and the answer 
came, “I am Jesus.” We have attested solemnly to 
these things, Peter and myself, and the others. We 
have suffered, day in and day out, hunger and thirst, 
every form of persecution, risked our lives over 
and over again, for the pleasure of telling a lie 
which has landed us in poverty and disgrace. What 
do you take us for? Madmen, fools, liars. But we 


THE ONE GENERIC FACT. 


49 


are all that, if Christ be not raised. So spake the 
Apostle. He would not tolerate any compromise 
position. He did not strive to find a standing- 
ground between positive assertion and positive de¬ 
nial. Resolutely, and without wavering, he held on 
to the facts in all their simple and sublime literal¬ 
ness. How different this man's way of speaking 
from that which some religious teachers of our day 
adopt! They try hard to find some standing-place 
between positive assertion that Jesus was the Christ 
of God, and positive denial of his claims over men. 
They talk of his “ moral influence ”; what! the 
moral influence of an impostor? There cannot be 
a doubt that this Jesus claimed a place which no 
ordinary man can claim without blasphemy: “ I and 
my Father are one.” “Then they took up stones to 
stone him.” They who took up stones knew what 
was involved in that claim. Supposing any teacher 
living were to use the language as to himself which 
Jesus used, what would his congregation do with 
him? Not stone him, exactly, but put him within 
stone walls. They would rightly deem that such a 
man was fit only for a lunatic asylum. Yet, knowing 
what Jesus did, we never accuse him of blasphemous 
egotism and lunatic conceit. It seems to us per¬ 
fectly right that he should say of himself what he 
did say, and take the homage which Peter offered 


50 


THROUGH DEATH TO LIFE. 


him, when he said, “Thou art the Christ, the Son 
of the living God.” 

And here, perhaps, is the place to remark upon a 
characteristic of apostolic preaching which we have 
not noticed sufficiently, viz., that it was not simply, 
or specially, the preaching of the Crucifixion of 
Jesus, but specially the preaching of Jesus and the 
Resurrection. The Crucifixion alone would have 
meant defeat; anyway, in the highest expression of 
it, the disgraceful martyrdom of a good man. Its 
influence could not have been more or other than 
that of Socrates, when he drank the hemlock. Add 
the Resurrection, and the whole aspect of things is 
changed. The life becomes not simply a martyrdom, 
but a revelation, a triumph. Man’s mortality is 
thenceforth the mortality simply of that which is of 
the earth, earthy. The great fact is his immortality. 
Death itself is no longer a terminus, but a tunnelled 
gateway into life. How altogether different our 
thought and feeling would be to-day if this event 
of the Resurrection of Jesus had not taken place! 

2. As to the ordinary disciples, what? if Jesus had 
not risen. Two consequences: their faith was an 
empty faith, and they were yet in their sins. Now 
what is an empty or void faith ? Is it not a faith 
which has no centre, an empty thing like a soap- 
bubble, a filmy something floating in vacancy? 


THE ONE GENERIC FACT. 


51 


We should never divorce the idea of faith from an 
object. Talking of faith in the abstract does very- 
little good. The question always comes up, “ Faith 
in whom ?” For faith must have a person to whom 
to cling. St. Paul says to these Corinthians, If 
Christ be not raised, what is your faith worth ? 
Faith always assumes the one believing and the one 
in whom belief reposes. Is it not evident that faith 
towards God will be strong or weak, according to our 
conception of what God is ? If the Eternal One 
sent Jesus Christ into this world, and then treated 
him so as the Crucifixion indicates, — filled him with 
unselfishness that was sublime, and then left him to 
be murdered by bigoted Jews,—what kind of a God 
is that to trust in ? If there be no resurrection, the 
Crucifixion was not only a' crime committed by the 
Jews, but — we dare to say it — it was a crime in that 
deific region, with which we do not associate crime. 
If the life of Jesus stops at Calvary, what does it 
say ? Simply this : “ I may be the best of men, 
spotless, sinless, with a consuming love in me for 
men, and yet get nothing for it but murder,— 
murder, foul and most unnatural! ” How can one 
build up a religion on that foundation ? How can 
one build up virtue on it ? What an appalling 
mystery life would be if the Creator, whom we call 
Father, should evolve into being such a soul as that 


52 


THROUGH DEATH TO LIFE.. 


of Jesus, simply to dash it into nothingness! No 
doubt of this being a devil’s world, if there be no 
Jesus the Christ now living in the joy of his glori¬ 
fied life. There is no person for faith to cling to if 
Jesus be not raised. 

But that is not all. “ If Christ be not raised, ye 
are yet in your sins.” There has no one come to lift 
you out of them, no deliverer, no rescuer, no re¬ 
deemer ! The idea that Christ lifts us out of our 
sins, and separates us from them, is one of which we 
cannot make too much. The parent sin of all sins is 
this separation from God. We are children. If we 
are such children that we have no trust in, or love to 
our parents, what monsters we are ! Or, what mon¬ 
sters our parents are, — one or the other ! When you 
say, “I have no faith in that man,” have you not said 
your worst ? And when you say, “ I have no faith in 
God,” have you not said your worst ? But, if he let 
Christ Jesus be murdered, you can have no faith in 
him. If that Christ came to live the life of perfect 
love, so that he might reveal God; if he came to say, 
“Now I have lifted you out of your sins, trust me and 
love me, and you will abundantly please God,” then 
how can you help having faith in God ? St. Paul 
says this is what he was, and this is what he came 
for. Is it not something for us to think about, that, 
apart from the personal Christ raised from the dead, 


THE ONE GENERIC FACT. 


53 


our faith is vain and we are yet in our sins ? Re¬ 
membering, that on the Apostle’s lips the word resur¬ 
rection implies immortality, we may urge upon a 
sceptic such questions as these: “ When you have 
taken away this belief in immortality, what single 
motive can be brought forward to liberate a man from 
selfishness ? Will you tell him to live for posterity ? 
What is posterity to him ? Or for the human race 
in ages hereafter ? But what is the human race to 
him, especially when its eternity is taken from it, and 
you have declared it to be only mortal ? The sen¬ 
tence of the Apostle is plain : “ Your faith is vain, ye 
are yet in your sins.” Infidelity must be selfish; if 
to-morrow we die, then to-day let us eat and drink ; it 
is but a matter of taste how we live. If man is to die 
the death of the swine, why may he not live the life 
of the swine ? If there be no immortality, why am I 
to be the declarer and defender of injured rights ? 
Why am I not to execute vengeance, knowing that if 
it be not executed now it never can be? Tell us 
why, when every passion is craving for gratification, 
a man is to deny himself the satisfaction, if he is no 
exalted thing, no heir of immortality, but only a mere 
sensitive worm endowed with the questionable good 
of the consciousness of his own misery ? ” These 
are the questions which infidelity has to answer. 

3. As to those who have fallen asleep , what? “Then 


54 


THROUGH DEATH TO LIFE. 


they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are per¬ 
ished.” Fallen asleep in Christ! What a suggestive 
word is this, — so full of rest and quietude ! Not 
dead, only sleeping, and sleeping in the embrace of 
Christ. But those of whom we thus think are not 
in this beatific state. If Christ be not risen, they are 
perished. We cannot believe that. There is some¬ 
thing in us which will not consent to that view of the 
case. There are some whom we have had on earth 
whom we really loved, who are gone hence. Their 
going was a loss to us; oh, how great! Relatives, 
friends, children — how dark the day on which they 
went! How lonesome the world became! The morn¬ 
ing came, but they came not; the evening hour of 
quiet domestic life, but the chair remained vacant; 
the unoccupied room, the silent chamber, the un¬ 
owned clothes, the very pkythings that seemed 
widowed; the handwriting that came so often, yet 
never often enough from the postman’s hand, — all 
these mute memorials ! Where is he ? she ? it ? my 
child, my friend, the one who loved me above all 
others,—where? Gone? Yes, but where? Into the 
silence and darkness,—a silence out of which speech 
shall never come, a darkness that has penetrated into 
my very soul! There is something in us that will 
not be satisfied with silence and darkness. Whence 
that something within ? How came it ? Why does 


THE ONE GENERIC FACT. 


55 


it last ? Why persist ? Why will it not go out as a 
quenched light ? Answer these questions, ye who are 
wise! Everything has a cause and a sufficient cause,— 
every thought, every feeling, every conviction, every 
intuition. The idea of immortality is in my mind. 
How did it get there ? How could it get into a mind 
not preadapted to receive it ? Then this intuition is 
corroborated by Jesus the Christ. “In my father’s 
house are many mansions ; if it were not so, I would 
have told you.” As if he should say, “You have in 
you intuitions of immortality, trust them. They are 
right. Follow them; they will lead you to your father’s 
house. What is this world ? A world of beginnings, 
of seeds, of germs, of embryos, of promises that 
never get fulfilled. A world of mistakes and errors, 
and trying experiences; and yet, a world in which it 
seems that everything troublesome and wrong might 
be easily otherwise. But deep down in every nature 
there is this feeling, that some day and somewhere 
the idea that is highest must be realized, and the ex¬ 
pectation that is universal of something better and 
more satisfying must be gratified. “Now see,” says 
one, “ what these sceptics require us to believe: that 
all those who have shed a sunshine upon earth, and 
whose affections were so pure and good that they 
seemed to tell you of eternity, perished utterly as 
the selfish and impure! You are required to believe 


5<5 


THROUGH DEATH TO LIFE. 


that the pure and wise of this world have been wrong, 
and the selfish and sensual all right.’' But how can 
we believe it ? The thing is impossible. The Resur¬ 
rection of Jesus the Christ says that they who have 
fallen asleep are not perished; they are in his keep¬ 
ing to whom all power is given in heaven and on 
earth. Then he has the power to save them, and 
keep them ; the will, also. Why should he not save 
them and keep them ? Perished ! Why, even the 
material does not perish ; it changes, but that is all. 
Why should the mental ? Why the spiritual ? If 
matter is indestructible, that which is superior to it 
must be. The Resurrection of Jesus is the great 
Yea of God to all man’s longings for immortality. 









// 


IV. 

THE LIFE-BRINGER. 



























“What is so universal as Death must be benefit.” — Schiller. 


“ Oh, yet we trust that somehow good 
Will be the final goal of ill, 

To pangs of nature, sins of will, 
Defects of doubt, and taints of blood; 

“ That nothing walks with aimless feet; 
That not one life shall be destroy’d. 

Or cast as rubbish to the void, 

When God hath made the pile complete; 

“ That not a worm is cloven in vain ; 

That not a moth with vain desire 
Is shrivel’d in a fruitless fire, 

Or but subserves another’s gain. 

“ Behold we know not anything; 

I can but trust that good shall fall 
At last — far off — at last, to all, 

And every winter change to spring.” 


Tennyson. 


IV. 


THE LIFE-BRINGER. 


I Cor. xv. 20. — But now hath Christ been raised from the dead, 
the first-fruits of them that are asleep. 

The moment we read these words we become con¬ 
scious of plunging into great deeps. The ocean of 
being is over our head, and underneath our feet; and 
we swim in it, dive in it, and try to explore it in 
vain. 

Standing on the great historical fact, “ now hath 
Christ been raised from the dead,” the Apostle im¬ 
mediately begins the discussion of the meaning of it. 
Perhaps that word “discussion” is the wrong word. 
It ought to be the exposition of the meaning of it. 
But his exposition is of the nature of suggestion only. 
He regards Jesus the Christ as the first-fruits of 
them that are asleep. The word “first-fruits” points 
us back to the Jewish ordinance, that the first of all 
ripe fruits should be offered in God’s house. Until 
this ceremony had been performed, no harvest work 
was to be done. It was a public acknowledgment of 
the fact that Almighty God was the author of fertility 


6o 


THROUGH DEATH TO LIFE. 


and the giver of abundance. No mere verbal ac¬ 
knowledgment, apart from the offering of the thing 
itself, was enough. And, says the Apostle in 
another place, if the first-fruits be holy, the lump 
also is holy. In this chapter he regards our Lord as 
the first-fruits of them that sleep. He is the begin¬ 
ning of that great Resurrection harvest, when those 
who have disappeared shall again appear. The offer¬ 
ing of first-fruits stood for the whole harvest. And 
so, Christ Jesus, the first who appears as the Con¬ 
queror of Death, is the pledge that all who share 
his life shall so appear. 

Then the Apostle goes on to recognize that as we 
are related to Adam, so also to Christ. Here we get 
into deep water. I can swim in it, but I cannot dive 
to the bottom. We can say this much: as Adam was 
the head of the race physically and psychically, so 
Christ is its head spiritually, and as to those im¬ 
mortal elements that are in us. Adam brings death 
to us. Christ brings life to us. We inherit the 
Adam nature, and so the tendency to sinfulness which 
is in it, the death which is in it. But we also have 
life brought to us and freely given to us in Christ. 
The one is set over against the other. From Adam 
we inherit the mortal part of us; from Christ the im¬ 
mortal. Death came to us through man; deliverance 
from death came to us through man also. St. Paul 


THE LIFE-BRINGER. 


61 


is speaking of what occurs within the limits of this 
human sphere. He is speaking of the conflict of the 
mortal and the immortal. He speaks of it in general 
and antithetical terms ; but with a boldness and 
breadth which are startling. The passage, “As in 
Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made 
alive,” is one of the most sweeping of antithetical 
affirmations. Again, I say, it goes beyond my ability 
of interpretation. I cannot see to the bottom of it. 
The “all” on one side of the antithesis must be 
measured by the “ all ” on the other side. It would 
be simple trifling with language to affirm that a para¬ 
phrase like this expresses all the meaning that is in 
it: “ As in Adam all men die, so in Christ shall all 
Christians be made alive.” That will not do. Alford 
says it refers to physical death, and rescue from phys¬ 
ical death. If that were so it would read, so far as 
its meaning is concerned, “ As in Adam all partake of 
physical death, so by Christ all are rescued from phys¬ 
ical death.” But what about the fact that we all have 
to partake of physical death ? It is here in our 
midst, a universal and undeniable fact. Infants die, 
children die; in maturity of life, as well as in old 
age, men die. Every one of us must taste of death, 
or death must taste of us. I very much question 
whether the death that came to us in Adam was 
physical death at all. The narrative in Genesis does 


62 


THROUGH DEATH TO LIFE. 


not seem to suggest it. St. Paul, so it would seem, is 
the wisest interpreter of the old Genesis record. 

In expounding this passage I should prefer to 
say that the Apostle is intending to impress upon 
us, in a general and antithetical way, that all that 
was mortal came to us in Adam; all that was 
immortal came to us in Christ. If we had nothing 
but that which came to us in Adam, we should all 
die. But we have more. We have the Eternal 
Life that is brought to us in Christ. The Adam 
nature was but the ground in which the inde¬ 
structible seed of the Christ nature was sown. 
Christ interprets Adam. The why and where¬ 
fore of Adam’s existence is not found in Adam, 
but in Christ. I am convinced that we cannot 
understand St. Paul so long as we think of Adam 
as God’s ideal man. He was not that. 

Before we get through this chapter we shall 
discern this more clearly. What was Adam, then ? 
He was the type of the man who has in him 
everything that is merely natural and psychical 
without that which is spiritual and Christian. I 
think St. Paul suggests that. But I would speak 
with all modesty and not dogmatically on this 
matter. Adam represented all dying men and all 
that could die in man. And I would rather put 
the antithesis in this way : So far as we are in 


THE LIFE-BRINGER. 


63 


Adam we die; so far as we are in Christ we live. 
Adam is a word standing for death. Christ is the 
word that stands for life. If we have nothing in 
us but that which Adam represents, we necessarily 
die; only in virtue of that which Christ brings to 
us do we live. Whether the Apostle intends more 
than that I do not know, but I think he must 
intend that much by these words: “ As in Adam 
all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive.” 

Having made this general statement, he goes 
on to remark upon the divine order for the regen¬ 
eration and resurrection of man. Every man in 
his own order. Christ is the first-fruits. A raised 
Christ is the beginning of a new order, and a new 
harvest of souls. Following Christ are those who 
have been Christians here on earth, so I take it: 
“They that are Christ’s.” Throughout the New 
Testament I think you will find this same order. 
In the Gospel of St. Matthew and elsewhere you 
find an acknowledgment of Christ and his followers, 
and then those who are not his followers. Christ 
standing in his own order — like as the head of 
our body is of its own order — then you find Chris¬ 
tians his disciples, his followers; then a third order 
of men. You find a Christ, a church, and a king¬ 
dom which is not a church. There is a distinct 
recognition of this threefoldness in the mind of 


6 4 


THROUGH DEATH TO LIFE. 


the Apostle, — Christ, the first-fruits; then they who 
are Christ’s; then the kingdom which is not a 
church. Now, the more I read the Bible, the more 
it seems to be clear to me that it is intended as a 
Book for the Church of God in this world of ours, 
and that they who find everything in it concerning 
the destiny of all kinds of men, in all the eternal 
future, clearly and fully explained, find something 
which is not there. Nay, it seems to me impossible 
that it could be there, unless all the revelation that 
God has to make could be put into a few years of 
our earthly life, and into minds like ours that can 
only expand to a very limited extent, and under 
the conditions of time and space. When I say 
that, do not understand me to affirm that there 
is nothing definite and clear. That would be an 
entire misinterpretation of my meaning. But take 
this chapter. There is much which is not definite, 
not clear; and yet where the horizon recedes, it 
becomes gloriously rich in sunset colors. You 
have seen sunsets which — in language so ornate, 
that the prince of orators would be struck dumb 
by it; in colors so gorgeous that no painter could 
paint them — told of a fine to-morrow. You looked, 
and looked, and looked, and then sighed a deep 
sigh, or brushed away a tear, and turned to go on 
your way. And some of these passages of Scrip- 


THE LIFE-BRINGER. 


65 


ture are like that sunset. Interpret them in words 
or on the artist’s palette, you cannot; but you feel 
their wondrous suggestiveness. Now, as the highest 
reach of language is language which is translucent, 
the language of the true poet which lets light 
through it, and suggests more than it says, so 
the highest order of thought is that which gives 
you suggestions of something larger than itself. 
To-day we sit at the feet of St. Paul, and confess 
that we cannot see as far as he saw, nor interpret 
adequately much which he wrote. Well, I for one 
am glad of it. When one stands on a hill and 
looks afar, to the extent of the carrying power of 
the eye, and then recognizes that there is much 
beyond, to which all that we have seen belongs 
and of which it is a part, then our hope and 
energy are aroused. We are far more satisfied 
than when we are shut into a valley out of which 
we cannot see. Only, even there a sky is above 
us; an infinity stretches beyond the power of 
imagination’s wing. There are some passages of 
Scripture which suggest an infinite beyond, with¬ 
out describing it. Listen as I read but this one: 
“As in Adam all die, sc also in Christ shall all 
be made alive But each in his own order — 
Christ the first-fruits — then, they that are Christ’s 
at his coming. Then cometh the end, when he 


66 


THROUGH DEATH TO LIFE. 


shall deliver up the kingdom to God, even the 
Father; when he shall have abolished all rule, and 
all authority and power; for he must reign till he 
hath put all his enemies under his feet — the last 
enemy that shall be abolished is death.’’ 

Immediately the language turns upon something 
that does not pertain to Christ and “they that are 
Christ’s” it becomes stately and obscure. It is as 
if we gaze from the top of some Alpine height. 
Everything melts into everything else, and the 
whole into the horizon, making a picture of sublim¬ 
ity with very little of definiteness. So long as we 
are on the plain, with the houses round us, and the 
villagers at their work, so long everything is defi¬ 
nite and clear. And so long as the New Testa¬ 
ment occupies itself with Christ Jesus and his dis¬ 
ciples,— their character and their work, — so long 
it is clear and crisp in its utterances, but no further. 
Let us remark upon that which is clear : — 

First. Christ's ability to redeem and save and keep 
them that are his. 

Secondly. His ability to abolish everything which 
is in enmity to them. 

Thirdly. Their inability perfectly to understand 
the work of Christ till it is accomplished. These 
thoughts are clearly inwoven into the texture of 
this narrative. Firstly. “Christ’s ability to redeem, 


THE LIFE-BRINGER. 


6/ 


and save, and keep them that are his.” The words 
“they that are Christ’s at his coming” suggest that 
all Christian disciples are redeemed and kept in 
safety till the end of this present dispensation of 
things. And this is the one thought as to the 
condition of the redeemed which the New Testa¬ 
ment makes emphatic, — they are in Christ’s keep¬ 
ing. And therefore well kept, well guarded, in bliss, 
in content; but their state is not perfected; their 
inward condition is not fully developed. Yet we 
need have no anxiety about them. They are in his 
keeping, to whom they specially belong. 

Now such language is accordant with our deepest 
feeling as to safety. When you send a child away 
from home, your chief anxiety is as to the character 
of the people in whose charge that child is. You 
know that everything else is secondary. With a 
sublime reticence the Scripture says little of the 
unseen world. But it makes much of the fact that 
they who are there are in Christ’s most holy keep¬ 
ing. Whatever is good enough for the Son of 
God’s love ought surely to be good enough for the 
other children of the family. “ At Christ’s coming ” 
— whatever that may mean — his disciples shall ap¬ 
pear, and be seen in their happy, contented, glori¬ 
fied condition. 

Secondly. Christ’s ability to abolish everything 


68 


THROUGH DEATH TO LIFE. 


which is in enmity to them. That, also, is sug¬ 
gested. The time will come when this “strong 
Son of God,” in the exercise of his “ immortal love,” 
will have abolished all rule, authority, and power 
that is in enmity to him and to the life of his peo¬ 
ple. He must reign till he hath put all his enemies 
under his feet. The last enemy that shall be de¬ 
stroyed is death. There are “ certain hindrances 
that at present prevent the perfect operation of 
God in our souls. Evil in a thousand forms sur¬ 
rounds us. We are the victims of spiritual and 
moral evil, and till this is put down forever, the 
completeness of the individual cannot be; for we 
are bound up with the universe. Talk of the per¬ 
fect happiness of any unit man while the race still 
mourns! Why, the evils of the race fall on him 
every day. Talk of the perfect bliss of any spirit 
while the spiritual kingdom is incomplete! The 
blessing of the individual parts can only come with 
the blessing of the whole.” Hence the Apostle’s 
language about the whole creation groaning and 
travailing together in pain until now, waiting for 
the adoption, to wit, the redemption, of our body. 

But St. Paul anticipates the time when all that 
is in enmity to redeemed men shall be abolished. 
The idea is too great to be appreciated by us. We 
want poverty abolished, and mental misery, and 


THE LIFE-BRINGER. 


69 


pain; then we opine that we could get on well 
enough. But our nature is other than that we think 
it to be. If we want to know our profoundest 
selves, we must look at Christ. He is the inter¬ 
preter to us of our own nature. But notwithstand¬ 
ing the mysteries which lie infolded in our nature, 
let us in hope and faith wait the working out of 
the purposes of that strong Son of God to whom 
all power is given in heaven and on earth. He 
can remove all hindrances and abolish all enemies, 
even that dark-visaged enemy whose frown darkens 
our life so often; “the last enemy that shall be 
destroyed is death.” 

But another thought suggested to us is the inabil¬ 
ity of Christians to understand the work of Christ 
till it is accomplished. The apostolic language is 
so general, yet so full of hope and confidence, yea, 
even certainty, that it forces this thought upon us. 
Telling us so much, why does St. Paul not tell us 
more ? The answer is: There are certain revela¬ 
tions which belong to earth; there are certain others 
which are not of this present condition of things, 
and cannot be told us except in the form of sug¬ 
gestions. Is it not so everywhere ? Childhood 
cannot grasp the great language and the complex 
experiences of manhood. “ I have many things to 
say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now,” are our 


70 


THROUGH DEATH TO LIFE. 


Lord’s recorded words to his disciples. Everything 
has its time and place. I am prepared to find that 
on many things concerning which we have some¬ 
times been proudly dogmatic, we shall, in the next 
stage of our existence, discover ourselves to have 
been entirely in the wrong. Not wrong on the re¬ 
lation of the disciple to the Saviour; not wrong on 
the fact that faith in him regenerates and saves; 
not wrong on the worth of his redemption; not 
wrong on the necessity of the Holy Spirit of God 
to the life of man; — not wrong on these, but on such 
a question as the relation of the Church of God to 
that great -unredeemed world which has gone into 
the measureless realms beyond the line of death. 
What will God do with his redeemed Church when 
he gets it on the other side ? How will he use it ? 
What activities and employments will he give it ? 
Such questions will come up, and we cannot bid 
them down. Our God is training us and qualify¬ 
ing us for what? What is all the discipline of this 
lower life for? It must have a meaning and a pur¬ 
pose outside the individual. “No man liveth unto 
himself, and no man dieth unto himself .” God 
Almighty will not endorse any of that narrow, 
mean individualism in which men and women are 
simply worshipping themselves, and using others 
to promote their own pleasure or profit. He has 


THE LIFE-BRINGER. 


7 1 


made this human family to be so inter-related that 
no part of it shall be content, and happy, and per¬ 
fected while other parts of it are depraved and de¬ 
moralized to the extent of being inhuman. God 
has more light and truth to break out from his 
Holy Word on the relation of men to one another 
and to their future. Never in this world can we 
fully understand the great mysteries of life. That 
knowledge remains for the future. But we can 
hold on to the Saviour, in the assurance that only 
in that is our wisdom and our comfort. 

There is not room for doubt that the Apostle 
Paul regards all men as having as real a relation to 
Christ as to Adam. Whatever of spiritual life is in 
the world, anywhere in any part of it, is from Christ. 
Whatever sunlight is in the world is from the sun. 
“I am the Light of the World.” The more I hold 
communion with the mind of Paul and of John, the 
more I revere the Christ of God. But I do not 
count myself competent to interpret all their great 
language. I am persuaded there is more in it 
than I have got out of it. Words on a great man’s 
lips mean almost infinitely more than they do on 
the lips of a small man. The only way to get the 
ability of a more adequate interpretation of Scripture 
is to become ourselves larger-hearted men. I cannot 
tell you how to do that except by becoming more 


72 


THROUGH DEATH TO LIFE. 


Christ-like in feeling and aim, and doing larger and 
nobler deeds in his name. But I am always struck 
with the great hopefulness of this Apostle. That the 
man who wrote those appalling words on human 
depravity, in the first chapter of the Epistle to the 
Romans, should cherish still the magnificent belief 
he had in the future of man, is remarkable. It must 
have come from his perception of the weakness 
of sin compared with the strength and glory of 
redemption. No man can read these verses from 
the twentieth to the twenty-eighth of this fifteenth 
chapter of first Epistle to Corinthians and fail to 
feel how vital they are — how hopeful — how victory 
and triumph seem to hide away in this great language. 
And it is all associated with the condensed truth in 
this one passage, “ As in Adam all die, so in Christ 
shall all be made alive.” Everything else seems to 
grow out of that. By the Christ, the Church and 
the Kingdom are to be interpreted. It would seem 
that Christ’s Church has to do business in Christ’s 
kingdom — that those who here on earth have been 
of his Church will have a rank not belonging to 
others; but the others, if not won by the Divine 
Love, are yet subjugated, brought under the divine 
order; when, how, I do not know; but the end is 
that God is all in all. There is the consummation 
“that God may be all in all.” What a grand 


THE LIFE-BRINGER. 


73 


thought! What a magnificent hope! Whatever it 
may mean, this is the far-off divine event to which 
the whole creation moves, — “that God may be all 
in all.” 






I 


V. 


BAPTISM FOR THE DEAD. 


“ All rose to do the task He set to each, 

Who shaped us to His ends, and not our own.” 

Shelley. 


“ O Lord, that I could waste my life for others, 
With no ends of my own; 

That I couid pour myself into my brothers, 
And live for them alone.” 


Faber. 


V. 


BAPTISM FOR THE DEAD. 


I Cor. xv. 29-34. — Else what shall they do which are baptized 
for the dead? If the dead are not raised at all, why then are they 
baptized for them? Why do we also stand in jeopardy every hour? 
I protest by that glorying in you, brethren, which I have in Christ 
Jesus our Lord, I die daily. If after the manner of men I fought 
with beasts at Ephesus, what doth it profit me? If the dead are not 
raised, let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die. Be not deceived: 
Evil company doth corrupt good manners. Awake up righteously, 
and sin not; for some have no knowledge of God: I speak this to 
move you to shame. 

This passage would seem to be in its wrong place. 
It ought, one thinks, to come after verse 19, inasmuch 
as it is the same kind of reasoning which is found in 
that and the preceding verses. It contains an appeal 
to certain facts which are meaningless and absurd, 
unless there is a resurrection life for men. The facts 
are these : baptism for the dead, a life in jeopardy in 
every hour of it, such violent contention at Ephesus 
that to the Apostle it was like “fighting with beasts,” 
— these and such like facts, what meaning .is there 
in them ? how absurd they are ! how unaccountable! 
how altogether foolish if the dead rise not into a new 
and higher life! The most unintelligible part of this 


76 


THROUGH DEATH TO LIFE. 


passage is that which is contained in these words : 
“ Else what shall they do which are baptized for the 
dead ? If the dead are not raised at all, why then 
are they baptized for them?” About the meaning 
of this passage there has been much debate. There 
are no fewer than seven modes of interpretation. I 
should be needlessly occupying your time if I sub¬ 
mitted to your attention the whole seven. Several 
of them are too ingenious to be probable. Only two 
of the seven, it seems to me, are of sufficient worth 
to be seriously entertained. The most learned 
expositors are divided between these two mean¬ 
ings. The first is that known as “vicarious bap¬ 
tism,” the practice of believers in the Corinthian 
church of submitting to baptism as substitutes on 
behalf of believing friends who had died without 
baptism. There are traces of such a practice in 
early Christianity, though it was regarded as a 
superstition by the more educated and intelligent 
of men . 1 Tertullian alludes to it when he says, 
“They adopted this practice (of being baptized in 
room of the dead) with such a presumption* as made 
them suppose that the vicarious baptism would be 
beneficial to the flesh of another in anticipation of 
the resurrection.” Chrysostom, in a curious pas- 


1 See Exegetical Studies by Dr. Gloag. 


BAPTISM FOR THE DEAD. 


77 


sage, informs us that after a catechumen “ was dead, 
they hid a-living man under the bed of the deceased; 
then coming to the dead man, they spoke to him, 
and asked him whether he would receive baptism, 
and he making no answer, the other replied in his 
stead, and so they baptized the living for the dead.” 

Another ancient writer (Epiphanius) informs us 
that “ among the heretics in Asia and Galatia, there 
was a practice when any of them died without bap¬ 
tism, to baptize others in their name, lest in the 
resurrection state they should suffer punishment as 
unbaptized.” 

It has been said that, though this was a mere 
superstition, yet without approving the custom, the 
Apostle quotes the fact, and simply asks, Why this 
custom of yours, if there be no resurrection state 
beyond the grave ? If there be no resurrection, why 
do you allow yourselves to be baptized as substitutes 
for the dead ? It is admitted that such a custom did 
exist among heretical sects. It is also admitted that 
the language used would bear, without any straining 
or violence, this meaning. 

But would the Apostle Paul be likely to refer to 
such a superstition without condemning it ? Would 
he use it as of any worth in the way of proof ? If the 
baptism for the sake of the dead was itself erroneous, 
what is in itself false cannot be adduced as an argu- 


y8 THROUGH DEATH TO LIFE. 

ment in favor of a truth. One would suppose that 
St. Paul, with his veracious temperament, could not 
have referred to such a custom without anger. Even 
if it were well meant, and only a silly superstition 
belonging to ignorant people who were troubled 
about their friends having died without baptism, yet 
there was no fact at the back of it to give it worth. 
Quotation by the Apostle, without rebuke, would 
seem even of the nature of toleration, if not endorse¬ 
ment. And so we infer that this interpretation, 
endorsed as it is by men of great learning, can hardly 
be accepted as the true one, unless indeed there be 
nothing to supply a better interpretation. 

The interpretation to which my own mind inclines 
as the true one is of another kind. In those times of 
persecution, when it was as much as a man’s life was 
worth to be an avowed Christian, it was very remark¬ 
able how vacancies made by death of those who had 
been baptized were speedily filled by new converts 
stepping forward and taking their places. These, 
accepting Christian baptism, were regarded as bap¬ 
tized “ for the dead.” The ranks were often thinned, 
but as speedily supplied with new recruits. Persecu¬ 
tion seems to have appealed to the hearts of the best, 
and to have stirred their courage into life. Men were 
killed ; new men came and took their places. Is it 
not probable that to these the reference is ? Because 


BAPTISM FOR THE DEAD. 


79 


the Apostle is speaking of “ standing in jeopardy 
every hour.” He is speaking of turbulent times, of 
afflictive dispensations, of fighting with beasts at 
Ephesus, — men, that is, who acted like wild beasts. 
All this lends probability to the position that when 
he refers to baptism for the dead, he refers to the 
wonderful immediacy with which converts came for¬ 
ward and took the place of those who had been mur¬ 
dered for Christ’s sake. Why do this, if there be no 
resurrection state ? — no state beyond death ? — no 
uprising from the tomb ? How senseless, how ab¬ 
surd, how recklessly fanatical to act so, if there be no 
resurrection state! Why should anybody be so 
utterly foolish as to do it ? 

If this be the true interpretation of the Apostle’s 
meaning, it suggests to us that the Christians of his 
time, notwithstanding all the heresies and errors 
which would naturally get possession of minds begin¬ 
ning to think on great themes, were a robust, manly, 
heroic race of men. What a touching scene it must 
have been to see the baptized rushing into the ranks 
of those who had fallen, nobly enduring the same 
sufferings, meeting the same doom!—like soldiers 
occupying the breach which death had made in their 
ranks, thus verifying the observation of Tertullian 
that “the blood of the martyrs was the seed of the 
Church.” 


8o 


THROUGH DEATH TO LIFE. 


In the presence of such a fact, ought we not to be 
stimulated to inquire how far we are worthy to be in 
the succession of such men and women as these who 
were baptized for the dead ? This chapter brings us 
face to face with an age of persecution and heroism. 
The Apostle Paul stood for the character of the 
Christian disciples of his age. It was an age of 
violence, of turbulence, of dreadful foreboding. No 
man’s life was safe. Every hour men stood in jeop¬ 
ardy. Dark uncertainty hung over everything. The 
clouds above were stormy; the earth beneath was 
treacherous. To any individual Christian to-morrow 
might be the day of death. The Christian assembly 
of to-day might never meet again in the totality of its 
brotherhood. At the next meeting half its members 
might have been seized, imprisoned, or confined in 
dungeons whose darkness was fetid with leprosy or 
some other dire plague. In those days tyranny gave 
no account of itself to justice; yet no persecution 
was dire enough or dreadful enough to scare many of 
the Christians into a denial of their Lord. It is a 
wonderful story. They must have felt that there 
was something in Christianity of priceless value. 
The dangerous times do not seem to have been those 
when persecution’s hand was heavy. Then men 
clung to Christ and to one another. But when per¬ 
secution’s hand was relaxed, and times were placid 


BAPTISM FOR THE DEAD. 


Si 


and comparatively easy, philosophers began to specu¬ 
late and to interpret in a manner not according to 
fact. Then the Epistles had to be written, lest the 
disciples should be drawn away from their simple 
faith in Christ. But notice how good came out of 
evil. These Epistles have been storehouses of truth 
from generation to generation. That which is spoken 
evaporates; that which is written remains. And so 
we ought never to be afraid of controversy as such. 
While we deprecate the method and spirit in which 
controversy is conducted, yet that is not owing to the 
matters in controversy, — only to the temper of the 
men who engage in it,—revealing oftentimes that it 
is not the supremacy of truth they are seeking, but 
only their own supremacy. A man should never 
enter into controversy until he has prepared himself 
for it. And how ? What kind of preparation does 
he need ? He needs just the kind of preparation 
which comes to a man’s soul when, in prayer and 
supplication, he abases himself before God. Then 
he will seek to be entirely fair with his adversary, 
be, above all things, anxious to discover the truth, 
and in no other way to win a victory. There is 
great danger lest we should conduct controversies as 
gamblers play cards, or dicers handle dice. Then 
controversy, even about the truth, demoralizes. St. 
Paul was a great controversialist; but what thorough- 


>52 


THROUGH DEATH TO LIFE. 


ness, what, self-repression, what nobility, he every¬ 
where showed ! He refused to overcome evil with 
evil — he overcame it with good. How are you and 
I to show the erroneousness of any position which is 
erroneous ? How does a housekeeper convince her 
help of the unclean and disorderly condition of a 
darkened room ? Simply by letting in the light. 
That is exactly St. Paul’s method in controversy. 
When the question of the resurrection life beyond 
death is in debate, he pours such a flood of light into 
the minds of the debaters that the question is settled, 
not for the Corinthian church alone, but for all 
churches. About the resurrection of dead bodies 
there may .be debate for centuries; but there has 
been none worth speaking of as to the resurrection 
of the dead since Paul wrote to the Corinthians. 

In the Church of Christ, as elsewhere, controversy 
is inevitable. Speaking generally, in the denomina¬ 
tion in which there is most thinking there will be 
most controversy. 

If, however, we strive to maintain the unity of the 
spirit in the bond of peace, all will tend to good. 
Timid souls deprecate controversy. They prefer 
stagnant to running water. Observing men note 
that only running water is pure. “ The murmuring 
brooks that make the meadows green,” fertilize the 
fields. Everything in creation has energy and 


BAPTISM FOR THE DEAD. 


S3 


movement in it. No generation has ever lived in 
which this fact is recognized so generally and so 
intelligently as in our own. Not a universe “ of 
dead matter, but a universe everywhere alive” is 
the dominant idea of our day. And so, if we are 
every now and again stirred up by some controversy, 
let us take it as a sign that the Spirit of God is 
“ moving on the face of the waters,” that God him¬ 
self is forcing upon us inquiries which we must 
make, in order that our life may be richer, ampler, 
and fuller. Let us not be angry with men who 
make us think; they are our friends. Our enemies 
are those who try to chloroform our minds — who 
administer a subtle opiate to our spiritual sensibili¬ 
ties, that we may dream instead of act. The man 
who gives me a new thought enriches me. The 
man who puts iron into my blood puts health into 
my blood. The man who in this world of snow and 
sleet keeps me moving saves my life. If the move¬ 
ment be an onward and an upward movement, every 
step is so much nearer to the Kingdom of Heaven. 
Every living man has something else to do than to 
vindicate the men of the past; he has to vitalize the 
men of the present. We cannot live in two genera¬ 
tions at once. It is hard to live in one. Only that 
which is eternal is independent of time. Eternal 
truth belongs to every generation, and to the men of 


8 4 


THROUGH DEATH TO LIFE. 


all time, because it is God’s truth, the truth about 
him who is “the same yesterday, to-day, and for¬ 
ever.” Nothing lives from one generation into 
another, unless it has in it the eternal truth of God. 
That is why the Bible lives and will not die; not 
because it tells us of Adam, or of Noah, or of Abra¬ 
ham, or of Moses, of Job, and Isaiah; not even 
because it tells us of Paul, and John, and Peter; but 
because it shows us God in union with man, draws 
aside the veil from the face of deity, and shows us 
“God manifest in the flesh.” It is this eternal life, 
the life behind and beyond the temporal life, which 
lends such an awful fascination to these records. 
It matters not who is the speaker; if God speak 
through him, man must listen. 

After this Apostle has appealed to the facts, of 
which they knew, in proof of the resurrection life, 
he comes down to that condition which is inevitable 
with men who do not accredit the resurrection state 
beyond death. “If the dead are not raised, let us 
eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.” That is the 
inevitable morality of atheism, the seeking satisfac¬ 
tion solely in the gratification of the senses. Con¬ 
stituted as man is, he will fight no battle simply from 
sentiment or feeling. He must believe that there is 
something worth fighting for. In every one of us, 
the flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit 


BAPTISM FOR THE DEAD. 


85 


against the flesh, and these are contrary, the one to 
the other. This world was intended to be a battle¬ 
ground. “ I came not to send peace, but a sword.” 
Depressing and discouraging words unless there be 
something beyond ! Everything on earth is lent us. 
Nothing really becomes ours till we have done battle 
for it. The earth and the heavens are full of knowl¬ 
edge, but we have to learn it. The only way in 
which we can make it our own is to struggle with it. 
Like Jacob of old, when he met the angel and had 
to wrestle for the blessing, so it is with ourselves. 
Everything external has to become internal. The 
fact without has to become the thought and feeling 
within before it is ours. Before this earth could be 
what it is, it had to be melted by fire, drenched by 
rains, swathed in fogs impenetrable by light. All 
this agony had to be endured. Before that bright 
spring morning which wakes up every bird, and 
excites every fragrance, and unfolds every leaf, could 
come or be possible, all that scorching fire, and 
drenching rain, and impenetrable fog had to be. 
Before you and your friends could meet around the 
parlor fire, and enjoy each others society, the Crea¬ 
tor had to make the coal whose red warmth casts its 
glow on your visage. Create it ? What does that 
word mean ? How much ? Begin at the beginning 
and trace the geologic formation of our common coal 


86 


THROUGH DEATH TO LIFE. 


from the time it was vapor till through endless ages 
it became forest, died into its unvitalized condition, 
and became hard as stone ; then you will know what 
the word “ create ” means. If it takes so long to 
make the coal which is the concentrated energy of 
ages, is it a marvellous thing that it should take 
years and years — how many we know not — to form 
the soul of man into a capability of communion with 
all that is deific and godlike ? 1 A soul! Who knows 
what it means ? The atheist says “man grew.” All 
these lower things conspired “to grow him.” Won¬ 
derful things they must be ! To-morrow we die; 
what then ? Let us enjoy our senses, our passions. 
That creed means all and everything of devilism. It 
cannot support morality. It cannot support order 
and good government. It has nothing to say to a 
broken heart. It has no human word in it, much less 
a divine word. A dog has a better creed than that; 
he does believe in some one above him — in his 
master. He has attachment, affection, patience, 
faithfulness, endurance. Between an atheist and a 
dog, I prefer the dog, for his master is his God. 
“ Blackfriars Bobby ” that died on his master's grave 
in Edinburgh seemed to have a mute belief that his 
master lived still, and would some day call him. 


1 See Logic and Life, by Rev. H. S. Holland, M.A. 


BAPTISM FOR THE DEAD. 


87 


There is no well-bred dog whose life has not more in 
it than this wretched creed : let us eat and drink, for 
to-morrow we die. Yet there are those who assume 
that society would be as orderly and as pleasant to 
live in if we regarded our fellow-men as soulless 
animals, born into this world simply to eat and drink 
and die. The Apostle regards such as deceivers and 
deceived. He warns Christians against consorting 
with them, on the ground that “ evil company doth 
corrupt good manners.” No man standing alone, with 
the universe around him, and the thought of God writ 
in his own nature, would ever feel, or think, or act the 
atheist. But men in companies will pour their worst 
thoughts into each other’s souls ; each will add fuel 
to the fire that is in the other, till feelings, thoughts, 
morals, manners, are corrupted. Now, if this be true 
of men, if the influence on them of evil company is 
so debasing, what must it be on children ? Yet, how 
careless are some fathers and mothers as to the 
company their children keep ! We need to say to 
these, using the Apostle’s language, “Awake to right¬ 
eousness, and sin not, for some have not the knowl¬ 
edge of God. I speak this to your shame.” Right¬ 
eousness involves right discriminations ; it involves a 
reasonable amount of asceticism; it involves careful¬ 
ness in the associations of life; it involves (at any 
rate until the individual is strong enough to do 


88 


THROUGH DEATH TO LIFE. 


missionary work in that direction) no fellowship with 
infidels and atheists. If a man has an atheistic 
tongue, I have no call to supply him with a pair of 
atheistic ears. It seems to me that the Apostle 
suggests that it is a shameful thing for a man to 
have no knowledge of God. There are three sources 
of such knowledge open to us. 

1. The creation is one : “the heavens declare the 
glory of God, and the firmament showeth his handi¬ 
work.” 

2. Our own natures : the material is not all, mind 
and spirit are undeniable, and so the Creator must be 
mind and spirit. 

3. The Revelation in Christ is a third source, and 
the highest, but it would amount to nothing if it 
were not adapted to our receptivity. 

No man can entertain a thought which his mind 
was not pre-adapted to entertain. Do what you will, 
you cannot get the thought of God into the mind of 
an animal. Do what you will, you cannot keep it 
out of the mind of man. Man’s nature was pre¬ 
adapted to it. But we may have the thought of God, 
and not the right thought. We may have thoughts 
of God without any correct knowledge of God. And 
yet “this is Life Eternal, to know thee, the only 
true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.” 


* 


VI. 


THE RESURRECTION BODY. 


“ The mould of each mortal type is broken at the grave ; and 
never, never, though you look through all the faces on earth, 
shall the exact form you mourn ever meet your eyes again! ” — 
Mrs. H. B. Stowe. 


“ The seed determines what the plant shall be, but it does not 
contain the plant.” — Westcott. 


“ Could a mysterious foresight unveil to us this resurrection 
form of the friends with whom we daily walk, compassed about 
with mortal infirmity, we should follow them with faith and rev¬ 
erence through all the disguises of human faults and weaknesses, 
waiting for the manifestation of the sons of God.” — Mrs. H. B. 
Stowe. 


VI. 


THE RESURRECTION BODY. 


I Cor. xv. 35. — But some man will say, How are the dead 
raised, and with what manner of body do they come? 

This great chapter seems to divide itself at this 
verse. The Apostle has been, up to this thirty-fifth 
verse, occupied with the Resurrection of the Christ. 
He has been showing that historically no event could 
be more abundantly attested. He has been connecting 
the life of Christ with the life of man, as the first- 
fruits are connected with the harvest. He has sug^ 
gested that with the Resurrection of Jesus, a new 
dispensation of things was inaugurated. The Divine 
Triumph over Evil was first illustrated in the triumph 
of Christ over death : that was the promise, yea, the 
assurance, that Christ should reign till he had put all 
enemies under his feet, and the great Divine Order 
which was contemplated in the making of man could 
be established as the final order in creation. But this 
great and glorious result can be brought about only by 
the general diffusion of the knowledge of God, as that 
knowledge is incarnated in Jesus the Christ. 


92 


THROUGH DEATH TO LIFE. 


Beginning with this thirty-fifth verse, the Apostle 
Paul grapples with another part of the theme. The 
question, “ How are the dead raised, and with what 
manner of body do they come ? ” is one that we have 
all asked. We see our relatives and friends die. We 
stand by the fatally sick one, and by and by the 
breathing ceases — the pulse beats no more — the 
features become rigid — the eye is glazed — the face 
looks as we have never seen it look before. There is 
no expression there. Soon the whole frame becomes 
cold, icy, rigid. And whether we are willing or not, 
we have to bury our dead out of our sight. 

Something has gone out of that body. That 
which vitalized it has gone. That which we could 
not touch, nor weigh, nor measure has gone. That 
which made that body animate, interesting, and 
beautiful has gone. And of all dead things nothing 
looks so dead as a dead human body. Moreover, 
that which gave form to the body has gone; that 
which distinguished it from all other animate bodies. 
No sooner has this something, we might say this 
everything, gone, than the body immediately begins 
to disintegrate. It immediately begins to return to 
its dust. 

Nothing can arrest it. We may embalm it, and 
hermetically seal it up — make a mummy of it; but 
a mummy is not a body. In the British Museum are 


THE RESURRECTION BODY. 


93 


many specimens of mummies brought, from Assyria 
and Egypt, forms buried there thousands of years 
ago. They excite no human interest, only appeal to 
curiosity and create aversion. Let it be acknowl¬ 
edged that wonderful is this structure of the human 
body! If with the coldness of anatomists we could 
stand off from this organism and study its parts, we 
should be compelled to admit that there is no machine 
like it. But our business here is not with anatomy. 
Anatomy is at the best concerned with structure; we 
are occupied with that which necessitates the exist¬ 
ence of these wonderful structures we call “bodies.” 

The necessity for this material body of ours arises 
from the fact that we belong, temporarily at least, to 
a material world. Without such bodies we could not 
see, or feel, or touch, or recognize this world. It 
would not exist for us. For a time we have to be 
bound to it — tied to it — confined within its condi¬ 
tions. Why and wherefore, we do not know; we only 
know the fact. It is the cradle of our humanity. 

As we trace the history of man, we recognize how 
slow has been the growth of spiritualized intelligence, 
of mind power. Men have so identified themselves 
with this world as to make it everything. The Old 
Testament life was a life within earth-bound condi¬ 
tions. Only the very highest order of mind in Judea— 
in Egypt—in Assyria — in Greece — in Rome — rose 


94 


THROUGH DEATH TO LIFE. 


to the conception of a life not bounded by material 
conditions. The religion of these peoples recognized 
that in order to have any blessing here on earth, and 
in order to be preserved from evils which might come 
upon them, it was necessary to propitiate and to 
seek the protection of the gods who made the earth. 
Their religion had relation almost exclusively to the 
present. Very few people rose to the elevation of 
thought found in that passage in the Book of Job, 
“ I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall 
stand in the latter day over my dust; and though 
worms destroy this body, yet without my flesh shall 
I see God.” 

It is only in Christian times, and among the most 
intelligent men of these times, that the human mind 
has risen to the perception of the fact that man can 
dispense with his material body and be the better for 
the deliverance. More than any other man who has 
ever lived, St. Paul has freed the mind from its slav¬ 
ery to material conditions. And if we follow care¬ 
fully his thought as it is spread out to our gaze in 
this chapter, we shall get into our mind ideas which 
will lift us above the materialism with which not 
only pagan and heathen peoples, but also many only 
partially enlightened Christian people, still are bur¬ 
dened. 

Not to anticipate the development of the Apostle’s 


THE RESURRECTION BODY. 


95 


thought in this chapter, let us recall what he says 
in other parts of his letters about this present mate¬ 
rial body. Writing to Roman Christians, he calls it 
a “body of death.” He regards himself as tied to a 
dead body. He speaks of a redeemed body. To the 
Corinthians he speaks of it as a wild beast to be 
kept in subjection. To the Philippians he uses a 
most significant and expressive phrase, “Who shall 
change this body of our humiliation that it may be 
fashioned like unto his glorious body ? ” And, in¬ 
deed, when you come to think what this material 
body is, and of what it is capable, how constantly it 
needs to be defecated and cleansed — how readily it 
contracts diseases, some of them of a most loath¬ 
some kind — how through it disease may be propa¬ 
gated, and how, as in the case of leprosy, it seems to 
become a disease in itself! — when you think of these 
things, you will not wonder that St. Paul should call 
it “ this body of our humiliation.” And yet, when we 
have said all this, to its disadvantage, we cannot 
withhold a recognition of the wonderful way in which 
the body, material though it be, sympathizes with 
and serves the purpose of the mind and spirit. The 
old Greeks, of all peoples who have ever been on 
earth, studied bodily form. They recognized its 
lines of beauty in their Dianas and Apollos. To a 
much larger extent than any other people, they lived 


96 


THROUGH DEATH TO LIFE. 


for the body, — lived intelligently and artistically for 
the body; as it were, mentalized the body. But 
while they became the most artistic people the world 
has ever had, they also became thoroughly corrupt. 
They proved to the world, for all time to come, that 
the service of the body, of that which is external, 
even when artistically pursued, issues in enfeeblement, 
effeminacy and corruption. Art refines to a degree, 
but only to a degree. They who talk of regenerating 
men by opening art museums and multiplying picture 
galleries must be people with but little reflection. 
In Athens of yesterday, and in Paris of to-day, we 
have the most salacious of all populations. That 
true refinement which implies modesty, and the most 
delicate respect for womanhood, was not found in the 
ancient, nor is it in the modem city. When, how¬ 
ever, we study the body under the influence of the 
mind and spirit, how admirable it often is — almost 
translucent, — at one and the same time revealing and 
concealing the thought of the mind, — the feeling of 
the soul! How often the very body seems to become 
mental, even spiritual, under the sway of strong, 
high, pure feeling, suggesting to us how possible it is 
to elevate even this body, and treat it as if it were a 
temple,—a temple of the Holy Spirit of God. 

This body is a body of humiliation, and yet it sug¬ 
gests a body of a very much higher and nobler kind. 


THE RESURRECTION BODY. 97 

But notice this: as the mind develops and 
strengthens, as the heart enlarges and expands, as 
the nature widens and deepens, this body becomes 
steadily, and more and more unadapted to it. Age 
is not of the mind and heart; it is of the body only. 
The more tyrannous the body has been, — the more 
pampered and lived for, — the older does the man 
seem, as the years creep on. Spiritually-minded 
men, unless they have been slaves to mental \york, 
do not become in feeling and spirit old, like men of the 
world. They often wonder at their own feebleness, 
because the spirit is just as willing as ever it was, 
though the flesh be weak. There is nothing that pre¬ 
serves juvenility like true piety. There is nothing 
ages men and women like the opposites of the graces 
of the spirit. Envy, hatred, jealousy, uncharitable¬ 
ness,— these bring the wrinkles into the face, and 
the age into the soul. Soul and body are so inti¬ 
mately associated that whatever brings hope, and 
faith, and love into the soul tends towards health in 
the body. I will make a present of that much to 
those of you who believe in mind cure. 

But the body that is, is only the forerunner of the 
body that shall be. That much the Apostle states 
quite clearly. All the way through this chapter he is 
fighting the thought that we ourselves put into the 
phrase “disembodied spirits.” St. Paul knew quite 


9 8 


THROUGH DEATH TO LIFE. 


well that such an idea was inconceivable to a human 
mind. Everything limited must have embodiment. 
And so these people of Corinth, assuming that there 
was no body but a material body, and the material 
body being left behind, they had great difficulty in 
believing in the continued personal existence of 
those who were no longer occupants of that partic¬ 
ular body. 

Are there not many Christian people who have 
held some such view ? How does the Apostle in¬ 
struct these perplexed ones ? He goes to nature, 
God’s great parable, and finds a suggestion there. 
Only a suggestion — something looking in the right 
direction and pointing to the truth. Why, even in 
nature, he says, in your ordinary processes of sowing 
and reaping, you sow not the body that shall be, only 
a bare grain. The grain you sow remains in the 
earth, but the vital element that rises above the earth 
takes to itself a body suited to it. Every vital thing 
has in it a tendency to gather to itself a bodily form 
suited to its necessities and conditions. The grub 
in its grub state is embodied in one form and way; 
by and by, as it advances in its life, that body is no 
longer suited to it, but a new body is developing: 
soon it seems to die into its chrysalis state; but, lo, 
an entirely new creature, no longer with the limita¬ 
tions of the grub body, emerges; a creature that now 


THE RESURRECTION BODY. 


99 


sports in the air, and no longer crawls on the earth. 
It has its own body, but how different from the grub 
body; yet there is a vital connection between the one 
and the other. The life has been a continuing life. 
Each stage in it has been preparing for the next. 
Each animal thing has a body of its own, suited to 
its conditions. The seed has its, the fish its, the 
bird its, man his. All flesh, even, is n<5t the same 
flesh. The fish could do nothing clothed in the flesh 
of the bird; the bird could not fly if he had the flesh 
of beasts. Everything has its own body suited to its 
state and its environment. That is the general 
thought to be first grasped. And not sameness, but 
variety, is the order of creation. There are terrestrial 
bodies—bodies that belong to earth. There are 
celestial bodies — bodies that belong to the heavens. 
And each and all of these have their special glory 
and beauty. A star is of one order, a sun of another, 
but each has its own glory. And so with bodies. 
There are some that are corruptible, others that are 
incorruptible. There is a body that belongs to man 
in his state of dishonor. Another which belongs to 
him in his state of glory. There is a body which is 
corruptible. There is a body which is incorruptible. 
There is a body which belongs to a man in his state 
of weakness; there is a body which belongs to him 
in his state of power. In a word, there is a natural 
body, and there is a spiritual body. 


IOO 


THROUGH DEATH TO LIFE. 


That is the climax of the Apostle’s reasoning. 
The natural body is the type and promise of the 
spiritual body, but it is not the spiritual body. It has 
a relation to it, — yes. The same relation as the ter¬ 
restrial has to the celestial; the same relation as 
corruption has to incorruption; the same relation as 
dishonor has to glory; the same relation that weak¬ 
ness has to power; the same relation that the phys¬ 
ical has to the mental and spiritual. Everything 
lower points to a higher. Identity does not consist 
in retaining the same material elements, but in re¬ 
taining that which is of the spirit. Through all the 
stages of his life, man remains the same — the same, 
yet different. Man is shedding his material body 
very gradually, and all but imperceptibly all the time, 
so that in ten years, not a particle of the old material 
body is left; yet he remains the same man. And, 
says the Apostle, man is never disembodied; all 
through time he is an embodied spirit, and when he 
has sloughed off his time body, his earth body, this 
body of his humiliation, he has still a body, but one 
suited to him in a way and to a degree to which this 
body never has been suited. There is the earthy 
body and the heavenly body. “And as we have 
borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the 
image of the heavenly.” All earth forces and powers 
and laws have been in our earth body. Like the 


THE RESURRECTION BODY. IOI 

earth, it has been subject to the law of gravitation. 
Like the earth, it has been subject to decay; like the 
earth, it has been in constant change. We have 
borne the image of the earthy. “ We shall also bear 
the image of the heavenly.” The one is the promise 
of the other. The one is not complete without the 
other. The spirit of man in its next stage of being 
will have a body suited to it. Not a body subject to 
all the diseases, infirmities, neuralgias, aches, and 
pains to which this is subject. Not a body which 
cold can chill and heat inflame. Not a body which 
can experience hunger and thirst. Not a body which 
can- be a tyrant or a slave. No; we have had this 
sort of a body. “ We have borne the image of the 
earthy.” The Adam body—we have had that. The 
Christ body — we shall have that. The beautiful 
human form will remain very much more beautiful 
than even in its Apollo strength and ideal loveliness 
it has ever been. Every one shall have his own body, 
the body suited to express his inward character; but 
it shall be as superior to this present material body, 
as the body of the butterfly is to that of the grub. 
“ As we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall 
also bear the image of the heavenly.” 










































































































































- 













































































VII. 


EARTH TO EARTH. 


“ If there is a loathsome subject on earth, it is the subject of 
the human body.” — Robert Elsmere. 


“In the whole history of human thought there are no grosser 
instances of slipshod reasonings and patent fallacies than those 
by which the so-called ‘ exact thinkers 1 have sought to rid us of 
our souls.” — Prof. Momerie. 


VII. 


EARTH TO EARTH. 


i Cor. xv. 50.—Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood 
cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit 
incorruption. 

One would suppose that it was quite impossible to 
make a mistake as to the interpretation of this pas¬ 
sage. Its terms are so concrete, its affirmation is so 
clear and direct, that all simile, metaphor, figure, seem 
to be effectually excluded. And yet this passage has 
almost been overlooked by timid and nervous inter¬ 
preters when they have been discoursing on the res¬ 
urrection of the body. The word “body” has been 
interpreted so materialistically that difficulties have 
been created of the most serious kind. The resur¬ 
rection of the dead has been interpreted to mean the 
resurrection of dead bodies. The word “body” has 
been interpreted to mean “material body.” The di¬ 
rect teaching of St. Paul has been so determinedly 
ignored or so persistently and ingeniously explained 
away as to excite wonder at the audacity of interpre¬ 
tation in those who assume to accept the teachings of 
Christ and his Apostles as authoritative and final. 


104 


THROUGH DEATH TO LIFE. 


Men have compelled Paul to say what he manifestly 
never intended to affirm. On the contrary, that 
which he is teaching us, with such lucid and splendid 
reasoning, in this chapter is that there is a natural 
body and there is a spiritual body, and the one is not 
the other; nor can it ever be converted into the 
other. You will have observed, if you have followed 
St. Paul’s development of thought in this remarkable 
chapter, that he begins with Christ’s Resurrection. 
He does not interpret the mysteries of that great fact. 
As the sacred writer tells us, “ Neither did his flesh 
see corruption.” There was a period between the 
Resurrection of our Lord, the bringing him back to 
the earth-life, and the Ascension, in which he seemed, 
as to his body, to occupy an intermediate condition; 
a half-glorified condition. His body was not grossly 
material like our bodies are now. Some great change 
had passed upon it which made it almost independent 
of the laws of gravitation. He appeared among his 
disciples when the doors were shut. No barriers 
could impede or confine him. And yet mortal eyes 
could see that body. Through it speech could come 
into audibleness. That state seemed necessary to the 
full and perfect attestation of the fact of his Resur¬ 
rection from the dead and his triumph over sin and 
death. But the forty days ended, and all the evi¬ 
dence of his Resurrection was supplied — all the evi- 


EARTH TO EARTH. 


105 


dence that the most rigorous necessity could demand. 
Then, while they beheld, he was taken up, and “a 
cloud received him out of their sight.” The question 
has forced itself upon many minds: In that great 
transition from the visibilities of earth, to the invisi¬ 
bilities of heaven, did any change pass upon that 
body ? In the light of St. Paul’s teaching in the 
verses following this I have quoted as our text, one 
would incline to the belief that that partially glorified 
body of our Lord became wholly glorified ere the 
right hand of the Eternal throne was reached. That, 
however, is not fully and explicitly taught us. It is 
only an inference from what is taught. In the first 
part of this chapter the Apostle is occupied with giv¬ 
ing the evidence of our Lord’s Resurrection ; his Res¬ 
urrection in his proper human personality. Having 
done that, he proceeds to link the destiny of the 
disciple of Christ with that of our Lord. Then he 
begins to grapple with the difficulty which is con¬ 
tained in the question : “ How are the dead raised, 
and with what body do they come.? ” Materialists 
cannot conceive of a body that is not materialistic. 
And a very large number of even intelligent Chris¬ 
tians are materialists even now, and seem to be in¬ 
capable of rising above that level. Clergymen often 
teach their people what St. Paul never taught his 
people. They teach their people that flesh and blood 


io6 


THROUGH DEATH TO LIFE. 


not only can inherit the kingdom of God, but that the 
subjects of that kingdom are in a most woe-begone 
and imperfect condition, until they get their flesh 
and blood back again. Nay, further: I know not 
whether there are any clergymen left who teach it, 
but I have heard of laymen teaching in Sunday-school 
that consciousness goes to sleep with the sleep of the 
material body — that soul and spirit are so insepa- 
rately associated with the material body that when 
that material body is buried, soul and spirit are buried 
with it, and remain asleep in the grave till God, by 
his mighty power, shall raise that body again. 

It is marvellous that any one is to be found capable 
of believing even stranger things than the bona fide 
materialist believes. He believes that there is no 
life apart from an organism, and no organism but a 
material organism. You ask him what gives that 
material organism, its shape, and form ? What makes 
it think and feel and hope and aspire and love ? He 
cannot supply you with anything approaching to an 
adequate answer. The man who assumes that soul 
and spirit go down into the grave with the last of 
the bodies we have worn, necessarily associates all 
thinking and feeling with the possession of a material 
form and makes the material greater than the psychi¬ 
cal and spiritual. 

I venture to affirm that it is quite impossible, with- 


EARTH TO EARTH. 


107 


out prejudice and with perfect candor, to “ mark, learn, 
and inwardly digest ” what Paul has taught us on the 
resufrection of the body, and still believe that he 
means by “body” the flesh-and-blood body. This 
passage we use as our text is so simple and so direct 
that there is no controverting it. But lest some one 
should think there is room for hesitation as to his 
meaning, let us turn to his second letter to the 
church at Corinth. He speaks there of the perishing 
and decaying of the outward man, the flesh-and-blood 
body. He seems to recognize how great a trial it 
must be to a man, and especially to a woman, to find 
this outward organism, which is so attractive when 
the freshness of youth is in it and on it, decaying and 
becoming seemingly less and less effective for the 
purposes of life. They who have had much of satis¬ 
faction, and perhaps much of compliment, in pos¬ 
sessing Apollo-like or Diana-like bodies must feel 
somewhat disconsolate when they recognize that 
strength and beauty are passing from them, and 
they are becoming very ordinary people. You young 
people who have attractions of person should remem¬ 
ber that they cannot last, and never rely upon these 
external things for your happiness. Attractions of 
mind and character, those amiabilities and competen¬ 
cies which are of the heart and mind, last; they never 
fade. In those directions seek your development, 


108 THROUGH DEATH TO LIFE. 

and you will never have the disappointments which 
come to those who have to recognize fading beauty 
and waning strength. 

But how does the Apostle Paul administer conso¬ 
lation to men who recognize that decay and infirmity 
have entered into the body ? Listen. It bears very 
vitally on our interpretation of the theme we are con¬ 
sidering. He is speaking of the bodily frame : — 

“For we know that if the earthly house of our 
tabernacle (this bodily frame) be dissolved, we have 
a building from God, a house not made with hands, 
eternal, in the heavens. For verily in this we groan, 
longing to be clothed upon with our habitation which 
is from heaven ; if so be, that, being clothed, we shall 
not be found naked. For we that are in this taber¬ 
nacle do groan, being burdened — not for that we 
would be unclothed (disembodied), but clothed upon 
— that what is mortal may be swallowed up of life.” 
How is it possible to take this language, add it to the 
language of this chapter, and then affirm that St. 
Paul ever taught anything like that which has been 
often taught, that the very particles of that material 
body which has been consigned to its earth are to be 
revivified and reconstructed in order to form a res¬ 
urrection body? Of such gross materialism the 
Apostle Paul was incapable. 

Of course the trouble is with this word “body.” 


EARTH TO EARTH. 


109 


St. Paul does not mean by it flesh and blood, and 
he most assuredly has no idea similar to ours when 
we talk of “ disembodied spirits.” If you had asked 
St. Paul, “ Do you believe in the resurrection of the 
body ? ” he would have said, “ Most assuredly.” If you 
had asked him, “ Do you believe in the resurrection 
of those dead bodies which we put into the grave?” 
he would have replied with emphasis, “ Flesh and 
blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God, neither 
doth corruption inherit incorruption.” It is certainly 
true that so long as man is materialized in mind, he 
cannot conceive of any body but a material one. 
There are conditions in which it may not be wise to 
disturb the idea of a material body as the only body; 
like as there are conditions in which it is neither 
wise nor kind to turn a man out of a very tumble- 
down old cottage. Unless you can supply him with 
something better, leave him in his primitive igno¬ 
rance and with his unwindowed raggedness. Even 
the dungeon of Chillon’s Castle had become home¬ 
like to the long-immured prisoner. But in cases 
where there is intelligence and some degree of 
spiritual discernment, where faith totters under the 
load of difficulties it has to carry, then we have to 
go to the word and to the testimony. Then we have 
to put the most advanced apostolic teaching before 
the human mind, because it is ready for it, and 


no 


THROUGH DEATH TO LIFE. 


demands it in order to the strengthening and the 
increase of faith. Nothing can be more indispu¬ 
table to those of us who accept apostolic teaching as 
given under special inspiration of God than that the 
Apostle taught a bodily resurrection and denied a 
flesh-and-blood resurrection. Now if we affirm a 
flesh-and-blood body to be essential to our complete¬ 
ness as redeemed and regenerated men and women, 
we affirm what Paul denied. Moreover, we load our 
creed with most unnecessary difficulties; we materi¬ 
alize our faith. Death, instead of being the vestibule 
to a higher life, an advance on this, becomes a pain, 
a penalty, a disability. St. Paul says, “ Knowing 
that while we are at home in the body we are absent 
from the Lord, we are willing rather to be absent 
from the body and to be at home with the Lord.” 
Now, if we could get rid of our materialism and the 
remnants of our inherited heathenism, we could go 
to the grave with a lovelier as well as a livelier faith, 
and instead of burying our hearts in it, we could put 
our feet upon it, and knowing whereof we affirm, say, 
“he is not here, he is risen.” That Christianity 
which does not help us when most we need help is of 
a very suspicious character and quality. It would be 
a heart-breaking thing to go to the grave and deposit 
there anything which was vital, anything which was 
necessary to the happiness or perfection of any one 


EARTH TO EARTH. 


Ill 


we really loved. Those scenes which in cemeteries 
and graveyards I have sometimes witnessed, when 
friends could not be torn away from the decaying 
material which was there deposited, are very sor¬ 
rowful scenes. While they speak of a love which 
is impressive and beautiful, they also speak of an 
ignorance which is painful, and of a low spirituality 
which is depressing. And yet I suppose I should be 
counted a heathen, if on such an occasion I should 
say, “ My good sir, or madam, there is nothing there 
in that grave but temporary consolidations of a little 
atmosphere, with a few pounds of phosphate of lime.” 
Yet that is the literal truth of the case. If it were 
scattered to the four winds, it would make no differ¬ 
ence to the happiness or progress of your beloved one. 
“But” — but what? “It was all I had left of my 
father, my mother, my child.” Alas ! alas ! that any 
of us should be so unimpressed by the teachings of 
our Lord and his Apostles that we should ever feel 
like that! Outside of what remains there, all is 
left. And where there has been the true, vital 
thing we call “love,” that love of God, whence 
it came, is sure to restore that which love needs for 
its perfecting. For that God, who is love, will 
never deny to love that which it needs for the 
completeness of its own life. That does not imply 
that all lives which have been tied together shall be 


112 


THROUGH DEATH TO LIFE. 


retied. Nothing of that. But when our Lord said, 
concerning the sinning woman, “ Her sins which are 
many are all forgiven, for she loved much,” he let a 
world of light into the mystery of God’s dealing with 
his creatures. 

In the light of what he has taught us we can 
say that that which love needs for its perfecting 
God’s love is sure to give. There is a Christian 
way of going to the grave. And there is a way 
most sorrowfully unchristian. And if by expound¬ 
ing this chapter I can get any of your hearts out 
of graves in which they are buried, and get them 
on God’s good guardianship over spirits which, let 
loose from the bondage of the material body, fly 
into him as their home, I shall have helped you 
to a higher and more beautiful faith; a faith of 
such a quality, that though the tears must flow by 
the grave side, yet they are like drops of rain with 
the sun shining through them; that is the faith 
which becomes a Christian. But while we asso¬ 
ciate our departed with the graves in which their 
worn-out material shell is deposited, we cannot rise 
to that quality of faith. 

Now, if we had studied St. Paul with open mind 
and intelligent appreciation, he would have deliv¬ 
ered us from two mistakes, both of which are fatal 
to happiness and confidence in respect to the dead: 


EARTH TO EARTH. 


113 

the one, that of trying to get a conception of “a 
disembodied spirit ”; the other, that of believing 
in the necessity of the resurrection of the flesh- 
and-blood body which is returned to its parent 
earth. That foolish jesting about “ghosts”—using 
the word in a way to suggest unbelief and unreality— 
ought not to be encouraged, and especially in the 
presence of the young. The unreal thing on this 
earth is not spirit, but matter. It has no independent 
existence. Do you believe in spirits ? asks one. Do 
I believe that there are persons without material 
bodies ? Most assuredly. Thomas Carlyle describes 
old Dr. Samuel Johnson as anxious to see a ghost. 
He then remarks, Foolish Doctor! Did he never, 
with the mind’s eye, as well as with the body’s, 
look around him into that full tide of human life 
he so loved? did he never so much as look into 
himself? The good Doctor was a ghost, as actual 
and authentic as heart could wish; well-nigh a 
million of ghosts were travelling the streets by his 
side. What else was he? What else are we? It 
is no metaphor — it is a simple scientific fact. To 
think of ourselves and of our own nature intelli¬ 
gently and according to the facts which are in it, 
is the best correction for all that slumbering mate¬ 
rialism which is concealed even at the heart of 
our most spiritual conceptions. You remember the 


114 THROUGH DEATH TO LIFE. 

prayer of the prophet Elisha for his servant, —• 
“ Lord, open thou his eyes that he may see.” 
And the Lord opened the eyes of the young man, 
and he saw. He saw a world of beings other 
than this, but not far away from it. Our Lord 
took his three most ample-minded disciples on to 
the Mount of Transfiguration, and their eyes were 
opened in a similar way, and they saw — still 
embodied, still in recognizable human forms — 
Moses and Elias; and they were talking with 
Jesus. “The popular notion that before an em¬ 
bodied spirit can be seen it must assume our 
material nature, so far at least as to reflect the 
light of this world, is exactly the reverse of the 
truth; which is that the change must be made in 
ourselves; i.e., by opening our spiritual sight.” That 
which we call “ spiritualism,” and to which so many 
have turned their attention, is the outcry of a bereft 
humanity, for some knowledge of the departed. And 
it would not be wonderful if every now and again 
some souls should have their eyes opened and 
actually see into the spiritual world. But that is 
altogether another thing from that materialization 
which Spiritualists announce as possible. There 
are no backward movements in Providence. The 
grub becomes a butterfly, but the butterfly never 
returns to its grub state. Men once emancipated 


eakth to earth. 


115 

never return (except by some fiat of Divine Power, 
as in the case of Lazarus) to material imprisonment. 
The words of David concerning his departed child, 
“ I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me,” 
express the law of human life. Death is progress, 
advance disimprisonment. 

Shelley has an exquisite passage: — 

“ Sudden arose 
Ianthe’s soul! It stood 
All beautiful in naked purity, 

The perfect semblance of its bodily frame, 

Instinct with inexpressible beauty and grace. 

Each stain of earthliness 
Had passed away; it reassumed 
Its native dignity, and stood 
Immortal amid ruin.” 

If only we could accept the truths about death 
and resurrection out of it, as Paul puts them, 
and take him as our heaven-appointed teacher, 
instead of diluting and infiltrating his meaning 
through so many webs of human opinion, the 
soul of friend, mother, child, would never be asso¬ 
ciated with the body that is no longer even a 
material body , but only dust — our heart would 
be with God all the more because our treasure is 
with him. And when we approached the great 
transition ourselves, it would not be with shudder- 


ii 6 


THROUGH DEATH TO LIFE. 


mg aversion, but rather in the spirit of that old 
but expressively beautiful ode : — 

“Vital spark of heavenly flame, 

Quit, oh, quit this mortal frame. 

Trembling, hoping, lingering, flying, 

Oh, the pain, the bliss of dying! 

Cease, fond nature — cease thy strife, 

And let me languish into life. 

Hark! they whisper, angels say — 

* Sister spirit, come away! ’ 

What is this confounds me quite, 

Steals my senses, stops my sight, 

Drowns my spirit, draws my breath — 

Tell me, my soul, can this be death? 

The world recedes — it disappears — 

Heaven opens on my eyes — my ears 
With sounds seraphic ring. 

Lend, lend your wings. I mount, I fly! 

O grave, where is thy victory — 

O death, where is thy sting ? ” 


VIII. 


THE GREAT TRANSITION. 


“You preach death as an enemy* instead of a friend and 
liberator.” — Gen. Gordon. 

“ Oh come that day when in this restless heart 
Earth shall resign her part, 

When in the grave with thee my limbs shall rest. 

My soul with thee be blest! 

But stay, presumptous, — Christ with thee abides 
In the rock’s dreary sides; 

He from the stone will wring celestial dew, 

If but the prisoner’s heart be faithful found and true.” 

Christian Year. 


VIII. 


THE GREAT TRANSITION. 


I Cor. xv. 51. — Behold, I tell you a mystery: we shall not all sleep, 
but we shall all be changed. 

A mystery is a truth of revelation, withholden for 
sufficient reasons, until the time is suitable and rea¬ 
sonable for its disclosure. The Apostle has built 
up his great argument for man’s resurrection from 
death; resurrection in personal form, and with such 
embodiment as is suited to his new and higher state. 
As I tried to show in our last discourse, he repudiates 
the idea of disembodied spirits ; he also repudiates the 
idea of a material corruptible body as being suited to 
the condition of human life which follows this. St. 
Paul regards the material as phenomenal, as having, 
that is, no consistency in itself, as temporary, as in 
perpetual change and flux. 

That which is substantial, continuing, abiding, is 
immaterial, of the stuff of which the soul, the mind, 
the spirit, is made. There is a natural body, a body 
made out of the material, and there is a spiritual 
body, a body immaterial, far more substantial than 


120 


THROUGH DEATH TO LIFE. 


the material, which cannot be corrupted and disin¬ 
tegrated, which cannot be disorganized and destroyed, 
as this body of our humiliation can be. He calls 
dying going to sleep, because in sleep there is no 
recognized communication with the outward material 
world. Besides, they who sleep do well; sleep has 
in it the idea of re-invigoration, as well as of cessa¬ 
tion from toil. It is a word which contains in it 
these pleasant ideas of restfulness, of cessation from 
toil, of re-invigoration, and yet of holding on to life, 
and so it exactly suits the Apostle. For the heathen 
word “death” he has less and less of use. Sleep! 
It is much better. The babe asleep in the cradle is 
a picture of innocence and beauty. The man asleep 
rests. The invalid so long as he sleeps a natural 
sleep is in a hopeful condition. And so the Apostle 
is enamoured of this word “ sleep.” 

But he has something to say to those who, in the 
light of the expectation that Christ would come to 
claim his own, and deliver them out of the grasp of 
the wickedness of this world, were musing on the 
destiny of those who would then be alive — still in 
this body of humiliation. 

The Apostle had made it so evident that a flesh- 
and-blood body could not inherit the kingdom of God 
— that corruption could not inherit incorruption — 
that the question naturally came to the front: What 


THE GREAT TRANSITION. 


121 


of those who are alive and remain when the Master, 
by his re-appearance, finishes up this dispensation? 

The words of our text are an answer to that in¬ 
quiry— more than an answer: they are light-bring¬ 
ing words. And the light is of the nature of that 
light which precedes the actual sun-rising. It has in 
it a tenderness and a vigor-infusing energy recognized 
by every song-bird in springtime. These words con¬ 
tain the light of the early morning of eternity, “We 
shall not all sleep; but we shall all be changed, 
changed in a point of time absolutely indivisible.” 
That is the force of the original word. 

“In the twinkling of an eye,” a reduplication of 
the idea. At the last trumpet. In the Scriptures, 
specially in the book of the Revelation of St. John, 
every great crisis time is represented as accompanied 
by the blowing of a trumpet. This period is called 
the last trumpet-blowing. You will remember that 
among the Jews the trumpet was used on feast days 
for the assembling of the people. This is one of the 
great feast days, the day of Christ’s re-appearance to 
his Church, after his long hiding of himself. Ob¬ 
serve how, as the Apostle’s thought becomes more 
spiritual, his language becomes more exalted. Let 
us not debase it by taking off the angelic garb in 
which he clothes his thought, and putting on it our 
soiled every-day raiment. There is nothing so stupid 


122 


THROUGH DEATH TO LIFE. 


as a perverse literalism. If every preacher could be 
a poet and a prophet in one, there would be a chance 
to get some adequate interpretation of the more 
seraphic scriptures. 

We must not miss the suggestion made to us in 
these words of “ an extraordinary work of Divine 
Omnipotence.” 

Death is the ordinary way of departure hence. 
But it is not the only possible way. Yet, sometimes 
it comes in a flash of lightning. A man’s monosylla¬ 
ble is cut in two, and the first half uttered in time is 
completed only by the second half uttered in eternity. 
So suddenly does death sometimes come. If only a 
man’s heart be right in the sight of God, that to 
some of us seems desirable. To others not so. A 
certain liturgy has in it the prayer, “From sudden 
death, good Lord, deliver us.” We all could join in 
the petition, “From a painful death — a death in 
which there is much physical agony, good Lord, 
deliver us. From a death long and protracted, from 
days upon days of death, good Lord, deliver us.” 
But in the prayer, “ From sudden death, good Lord, 
deliver us,” I, for one, cannot unite. 

Does it not seem to you that, in this passage, the 
Apostle holds out the suddenness of the transition as 
desirable, and even glorious ? In a moment, the 
transition is made! Bishop Jeremy Taylor has a 


THE GREAT TRANSITION. 


123 


work on “ Holy Living,” and another on “ Holy Dy¬ 
ing.” The excited revivalist says, “Prepare to die!” 
Is Bishop Jeremy Taylor’s book on “Holy Dying” 
apostolic ? Is the idea which the excited revivalist 
thunders apostolic ? The man who is preparing to 
live is the man who is best preparing to die. Even 
among the old prophets the message was not, “ Pre¬ 
pare to die,” but, “Prepare to meet thy God, O 
Israel.” That is intelligible. Notice how little of 
lugubriousness there has been in the Apostle’s lan¬ 
guage in this chapter. There is hardly a mournful 
sound. Resurrection, triumph, victory, — these are 
the tones from end to end of it. And in our text there 
is martial music, and the hosts gather, no longer to 
fight; for them it is the end of the war, it is the last 
trump. They that have been, to all seeming, asleep, 
and they who are alive and remain, all gather, and 
on these last the great transition comes; they are 
delivered from their mortality, and from the body of 
humiliation, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, 
by the Omnipotent Power of God. “As the light¬ 
ning lighteneth out of the east, and shineth even 
unto the west, so (to them) shall the coming of the 
Son of Man be.” 

In Bengel’s Gnomon we have this remark upon this 
“mystery,” to which the Apostle refers : “ An extraor- 


124 


THROUGH DEATH TO LIFE. 


dinary work of Divine Omnipotence. Who, then, 
can doubt that man, even at death, may be suddenly 
freed from sin ? ” In what way Bengel uses the word 
“sin” there, I do not know. His idea seems to be 
this: Cannot he who so suddenly changes the bodily 
organism from the mortal to the immortal, from the 
corruptible to the incorruptible, cannot he as sud- 
denly change the soul from unclean to clean, from 
sinful to righteous ? Who can answer ? All we can 
say, is, Possibly, probably. 

Once I got, from some source or other, an idea into 
my mind that all universals are blessings. And I re¬ 
member how in the lap of it there came this thought: 
Death is universal; therefore death is a blessing. And 
I had to say, Yes. But some one says: “ Now, I will 
push him into a corner. Is not sin a universal ? is it 
a blessing ? ” Whenever there is danger of being in¬ 
dicted for heresy by any self-originated positive 
affirmation, it is wise to put an Apostle in the place, 
and let him be condemned first, because condemna¬ 
tion with an Apostle must mean vindication. The 
answer to the question, “Sin is a universal; is it a 
blessing ? ” may be more wisely given in the Apos¬ 
tle’s words, “ God hath concluded all under sin, that 
he may have mercy upon all.” So far as'sin means 
inherited corruption, so far it puts us in this position, 
that it makes us objects of the Divine pity and com- 


THE GREAT TRANSITION. 


125 


passion. So far as it is personal wilfulness, it calls 
for rebuke and repentance. Between guilt and cor¬ 
ruption a distinction may be made, if we refer guilt 
to the action of the will or spiritual powers, and cor¬ 
ruption to the action of those involuntary powers of 
the mind, which are analogous to the involuntary 
powers of the body. 

“ Sin is the admission and acceptance by the per¬ 
son of anything that is opposed to reason, and con¬ 
science, and the law of God.” 

The sin of Adam was that he rejected God as a 
guide and portion, and chose himself as a guide 
and the world as a portion; and this, account for 
it as we may, his descendants uniformly do. This 
is man’s prerogative, that he has this power. “In 
that prerogative of man, by which he can either 
accept or reject the law of his being, he differs 
wholly from any mere animal. No animal can ap¬ 
proximate anything of the kind. We have here, 
indeed, a fundamental, perhaps the most funda¬ 
mental, difference between man and the brute.” 
No brute can be either a fool or a fiend. The 
Scripture idea of man in his present state is that 
of a being capable of an indefinite progress, either 
upward or downward, and of choosing which it shall 
be. 

I say, then, in considering the question of man’s 


126 


THROUGH DEATH TO LIFE. 


sinfulness, we must make an intelligent analysis of 
sinfulness. So far as it is an inherited tendency, 
it is of the nature of corruption, and so puts us 
under the pity, and entitles us to the mercy, of 
God; so far as it is deliberate wilfulness, it brings 
us into antagonism with God. Depend upon it, 
that no man ever yet struggled against an evil of 
which he was conscious, persistently and persever- 
ingly, but he ultimately succeeded; for God is on 
his side all the time. And if he seemed to himself 
never to conquer till death, in the great deliverance 
it effects, death itself shall prove to him that he 
has conquered. 

Let us remember that a man is never really sub¬ 
dued till his will is subdued. No man is perma¬ 
nently and fixedly evil till he is willingly evil. 
Many and many and many a man who has fallen 
and fallen and fallen has yet never deliberately 
willed to fall. The best part of his nature has pro¬ 
tested all the time. And every man is that which 
is best in him. Never judge a man by his worst. 
Always judge him by his best. No single action 
ever tells you what a man is; only the tendency 
of his life can tell that. And only God Almighty 
can fully know it. Therefore let us not judge 
one another severely, — as much as possible not at 
all. God hath committed all judgment to his Son 


THE GREAT TRANSITION. 


127 


because he, and he only, knows us through and 
through. If we would know what the Apostle 
means by the words, “ He hath concluded all under 
sin that he may have mercy upon all,” it is neces¬ 
sary that we should recognize that sinfulness has 
this duality in it: it is partly the inherited corrup¬ 
tion of the nature and partly wilfulness; For the 
former we are not responsible; only for the latter. 
We never know what that great change which 
comes in death shall do for any character. Even 
at and in death many and many a man may find 
that his crowning mercy has come, and that he is 
suddenly freed from sin. 

Anyway, we cannot doubt that the Apostle looks 
upon this great change of which he speaks as one 
of the choicest of blessings. The language he 
uses is the language of exultation. Now, if only 
we can get a soul within the ribs of death, why, 
then, death becomes something else than it would 
otherwise be. It is nonsense to affirm that it does 
not signify what a man’s ideas are, providing his 
life is right. A man’s life is made up of ideas 
wrought out into practice. Is it not altogether 
thoughtless, indeed absurd, to say that death to 
the materialist and to St. Paul means the same? 
The materialist looks upon death as calamity, as 


128 


THROUGH DEATH TO LIFE. 


disorganization, as extinction. St. Paul looks upon 
it as transition; as a dark cloud with a silver lin¬ 
ing; as containing a glorious change and a magni¬ 
ficent secret; as a portal to a palace; as the act 
of introduction to his chiefest and best Friend. 
And this is why he never feared it. Again and 
again he went up to it, nor shrank, nor blenched, 
nor was dismayed. 

“To stay here is necessary for the work, but to de¬ 
part and be with Christ is far better.” How absurd 
to assume that to St. Paul and to the materialist 
death was the same event! The idea of it each held 
was totally different, and therefore the feeling each 
had, when thinking of it, was as darkness is to light. 
And our happiness and misery in life — are they not 
made up of thoughts and feelings ? Most assuredly. 
If only we can get light into our ideas and love into 
our feelings, chronic misery becomes impossible — 
only possible when we have dark ideas and loveless 
feelings. Very much less than we think does our 
happiness depend upon what is external to us. If 
there be no heaven within, all the externalities of an 
outward heaven would be insufficient to produce hap¬ 
piness. 

Hence, the more you think of it, the more will the 
teaching of St. Paul appear truth and wisdom. “ We 
shall all be changed.” With what exultation he 


THE GREAT TRANSITION. 


129 


utters those words ! Everywhere the New Testament 
speaks of change; “regeneration” is the word often 
used, but it is the same idea. Have you never been 
wearied by the thought of life, as it is now, continu¬ 
ing on and onj* Supposing Immortality should be 
the perpetuation of our life just as it is; are there 
not times when ^you doubt whether it would be a 
benediction ? Do not men speak of the weary bur¬ 
den of life? Yes, indeed. The Apostle comes to 
our rescue, and adds his simple words, “ We shall all 
be changed.” Then, what hopes, what anticipations, 
what possibilities ! “ We shall all be changed! ” 

“ Corruption shall put on incorruption; the mortal 
shall put on Immortality.” “We shall all be changed.” 
Death shall be swallowed up of victory; death, of 
which disease is but the forerunner, the reminder, 
the precursor, having a constant taste of death in it; 
so that the perpetually diseased are perpetually sip¬ 
ping at Death’s bitter cup. But “ we shall all be 
changed.” That day we spent on our Mount of Trans¬ 
figuration, when we said to our Lord, “ It is good for 
us to be here ; let us make here a permanent abid¬ 
ing-place ”; that day was a promise of what is coming. 
It was a bird of paradise let loose from its confines to 
sing its song for awhile, and then disappear. For 
like as a man is to be judged by his best, so life is to 
be judged by what it has been in its best moments. 


130 


THROUGH DEATH TO LIFE. 


The best is always the truest. The best is always 
that which is nearest heaven. The best is always 
that likest God. Recall your best days, recall your 
gladdest hours, recall your seasons when the heart 
was purest, and when tears ran down your cheeks, 
not because you were sad, but because you were 
glad, for in that direction the change has to 
come. Oh, you don’t know yet what Christianity is. 
You have seen it in poverty, in want, in weakness, in 
woe. A poor wayfaring man, struggling with his 
hard fate, kicked, buffeted, despised, persecuted, 
jeered at by badly trained children, dogs let loose 
upon him — even as such an one has Christianity 
been in the world, — a candle in a dark room, a light 
in a dark place, a sweet song amid discords, a heav¬ 
enly toned voice drowned in Babel sounds; but its 
day is coming. The heavenly toned voice will rise 
above and still the Babel sounds ; the sweet song will 
penetrate and harmonize the discords ; the light will 
illumine the dark place till all the darkness flies; the 
candle will increase in brightness till it becomes a 
sun ; the poor despised man will rise up in the dignity 
of a king, — “ King of Kings and Lord of Lords.” 


IX. 


THE STING OF DEATH. 


“ The doctrine of hereditary corruption is so far from being 
contradictory to modern ideas, that it may be said to be a direct 
corollary from the doctrine of evolution.” — Principal Tulloch. 


“ Sin can have no tenure by law at all, but is rather an eter¬ 
nal outlaw, and in hostility with law past all atonement; both 
diagonal contraries, as much allowing one another as day and 
night together in one hemisphere.” — Milton. 


“ Guilt, though it may attain temporal splendor, can never 
confer real happiness.” — Sir Walter Scott. 


IX. 


THE STING OF DEATH. 


I Cor. xv. 56. — The sting of death is sin; and the power of sin is 
the law, but thanks be unto God which giveth us the victory, through 
our Lord Jesus Christ. 

The words between the fifty-second and the fifty- 
sixth verses of this chapter are an amplification of 
the thought on which we have already dwelt. In this 
passage there is a new idea, — a reminder of what it 
is in death which hurts. That the Apostle should 
speak of death as a venomous beast is natural. He 
is thinking of the Garden of Eden and its serpent. 
Therefore, he refers to the “ sting ” of death. Sin is 
that sting. Sin ! what is it ? The word has come to 
be so theological that it has almost been lifted out of 
the region of our ordinary thought and speech. It 
hardly stands as a synonym for the words “wrong,” 
“wickedness,” “crime.” And yet it means that 
which is denoted by these words, and more. It goes 
deeper than these words go. It suggests a wilful, 
depraved, and corrupt state , not simply wicked and 
corrupt deeds and acts, but a biassed, inward condi¬ 
tion. Apart from his deeds, man is sinful. Suppose 


134 


THROUGH DEATH TO LIFE. 


there could be a case of a man who had never con¬ 
sciously done any corrupt act; still the effort which 
such a man had made to abstain from bad deeds, — 
the fight he had had with himself, — would indicate an 
inward depravity. So that the Scripture representa¬ 
tion,— “There is none righteous; no, not one”; 
“ God hath concluded all under sin, that he may have 
mercy upon all,” — suggests a rule without any excep¬ 
tion. In this condition it is very unbecoming in us 
to reproach each other with depravity. The same 
nature is in us all, and that nature has in it every¬ 
where a corruptedness inherited from the past. Can 
we get any intelligent idea of that corruptedness ? 
Can we understand it ? How came it? The ques¬ 
tion will in our day be answered by men of differ¬ 
ent schools of thought according to their views of 
human nature. After examining all the views which 
have been presented, I am persuaded that the New- 
Testament view of the case is the most satisfactory, 
because it goes to the root of the matter, and not 
simply because it is that of Jesus of Nazareth and 
his disciples. Your patience with me would be gone 
long before I had arrived at the end of the theme, if 
I reviewed the various theories which have been ad¬ 
vanced on the question of what sin is, and how it 
came into our nature. I propose no such use or 
waste of your time. I may be excused, however, if 


THE STING OF DEATH. 


135 


I make a very brief reference to the view of sin 
which is held by the most recent school of scientific 
investigators and by the spiritual minds in that 
school. The evolutionists undertake to account for 
human depravity in this way : Man’s bodily organism 
has been evolved from the lower animal organisms. 
In it there remains a tendency towards a reversion 
to the original type. That is one of the discovered 
laws in nature. Our domesticated creatures all ex¬ 
hibit that tendency. Not only so : flowers manifest 
it ; the choicest floral results depend on cultivation. 
The exquisitely beautiful tints and tones of color in 
flowers have been developed under the care of man. 
Cease caring for these flowers, ahd every one of them 
tends to revert to its former type. So with animals, 

— dogs and horses: under man’s influence they 
have become the noble and useful creatures they are; 
but that influence and training have to be continued 
or these creatures will revert to their former wild and 
savage condition. Man has, in his physical organism, 

— say the more open-minded men of this school, — 
reminiscences of his animal origin. While he has 
in him something found in no animal, — that which 
apprehends the invisible and eternal, — he has also 
that which is merely animal. “ Hence it is that the 
flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against 
the flesh.” In a very few words, and, of course, 


136 


THROUGH DEATH TO LIFE. 


very inadequately, — but with sufficient lucidity for 
our purpose, — that represents the most recent view 
of human depravity from the scientific side of things. 
There is nothing in it unreasonable or unintelligent, 
— nothing which is in violent antagonism to anything 
which has been taught us by the Apostle Paul. So 
orthodox a man as President McCosh accepts it as a 
statement not at all anti-biblical. But while there 
is nothing in that statement of the case very objec¬ 
tionable, yet it does not seem altogether sufficient. 
It throws the odium of our sinful capability back on 
him who made us, and says, “ Why hast thou made 
me thus ? ” That feeling which the poet of Scotland 
put into such charming verse, when death was staring 
him in the face, has, I doubt not, often been in our¬ 
selves : — 

“ O Thou, unknown, almighty Cause 
Of all my hope and fear, 

In whose dread presence ere an hour 
Perhaps I must appear, 

“ If I have wandered in those paths 
Of life I ought to shun, — 

As something loudly in my breast 
Remonstrates I have done,— 

“ Thou know’st that Thou hast formed me 
With passions wild and strong; 

And listening to their witching voice 
Has often led me wrong.” 


THE STING OF DEATH. 


137 


To some persons this may seem very irreverent. 
To go into the Divine Presence and say, “I was 
born so; born with these tendencies, these passions 
wild and strong”—that seems, doubtless, to some, al¬ 
most unpardonable audacity. But why should Burns 
be condemned, and David excused ? “ Behold I was 

shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother con¬ 
ceive me.” What is that but saying to the Almighty, 
“ I did not originate these tendencies; I inherited 
them.” The deep reverence of the soul is in itself 
a most excellent endowment. Is that reverence in¬ 
consistent with the utmost honesty in the expression 
of feeling and conviction ? We know how difficult it 
is to be perfectly candid in the presence of each 
other. Oftentimes that want of candor proceeds 
from a good feeling; the fear of offending or 
wounding another; or the fear of misleading. 
Minds are in different degrees of advance, and that 
which would be understood by minds in one stage 
of growth would be misunderstood in another and 
earlier stage. 

Into the Divine Presence we can go with the most 
perfect candor. Our God knows us, and he knows 
us altogether. Omniscience thus becomes a harbor 
of refuge for us. And there is no religious exercise 
of the soul more salutary than that in which we go 
into the closet and shut the door and pour out every- 


138 


THROUGH DEATH TO LIFE. 


thing before God. The soul seems to get cleansed 
by it, and be set to new resolves in a new strength. 

And this perfect candor — does it not mean perfect 
confidence ? What is it that keeps even the nearest 
friends from a thorough unbosomment of themselves 
to one another ? Is it not lack of confidence ? Now, 
when a man goes into the Divine Presence, in an act 
of private devotion, and empties his doubts and fears 
and suspicions and apprehensions on that Unseen 
Altar by which the High Priest of humanity perpet¬ 
ually stands, does he not honor his Lord by his confi¬ 
dence ? “ I can tell Thee all, O my God, and believe 
still that Thou wilt not despise me! ” Now where 
there is perfect confidence there is no irreverence. 
The one great, grand, glorious, wonderful thing in 
true motherhood is its readiness to forgive all and 
everything to the prodigal son, and take him back 
again into the arms of love, in the belief that there is 
something worth saving. I can never think of the 
tremendous obstinacy which there is in a mother’s 
affection for her son, without wondering. And yet, 
is it not the best thing there is on this earth of ours ? 
The way in which a mother will perversely believe 
that her son is this, that, and the other, when every¬ 
body else sees that he is not — the way in which she 
will yield to him, and coax him, and flatter him, and 
make him believe in himself as something vastly su- 


THE STING OF DEATH. 


139 


perior to the ordinary run of folks — is there anything 
on earth so deliciously obstinate, and beautiful, and 
ridiculous ? And yet is there anything on earth so 
near heaven ? The scientific Calvinist comes along 
and says : “That is weakness. It is a sign of human 
depravity.” Then I say, thank God for human de¬ 
pravity if it is capable of such loving perversity of 
blind belief in a good under all the evil. Now, as a 
son can go with all his wrecked life into the presence 
of that mother, and she will believe in him still, and 
will even be thankful for his confidence in her, so I 
believe, on the testimony of all the highest teaching 
in Scripture, that a sinning soul can go with the ut¬ 
most candor into the Divine Presence, and not be 
thrust out, not be denied audience. The good feeling 
which follows such unbosoming is an evidence of the 
acceptance a soul gets even when it goes like David 
and says, “ Behold, I was shapen in iniquity,” or like 
Burns, — 

“Thou knowest Thou hast formed me 
With passions wild and strong; 

And listening to their witching voice 
Has often led me wrong.” 

This poet found, when in the very presence of 
death, that the sting of death is sin. A sinful con¬ 
sciousness accompanies us all through life. It dark¬ 
ens everything, Specially does it hang a heavy cloud 


140 


THROUGH DEATH TO LIFE. 


over the fact we call death ; a cloud different in 
density and darkness to different men, according to 
the life they have lived. To some it is black, very 
black. To others it is a cloud through which the 
sun of righteousness shines, brilliant with purple and 
gold, betokening a fine to-morrow. 

The Apostle’s second thought is the relation of 
sin to law. I am afraid that any discussion of this 
relation would seem to you very dry and uninterest¬ 
ing. But if you will have patience with me for only 
a minute or two, I will try to suggest what the 
Apostle means by these words, “The strength (or 
power) of sin is the law.” He does not mean Jew¬ 
ish law simply or chiefly, but moral law. That 
moral law is only a part of that great moral order 
which is behind all moral life. St. Paul taught that 
“man is a moral being subject to Divine author¬ 
ity,”— in other words, a subject of law. He takes 
man, and, placing him before the mirror of divine 
law, shows him all the ruin and sadness of his 
moral state. The more man knew of the divine law 
of righteousness, the more incompetent, incapable, 
and sinful he appeared. Physically, mentally, and 
spiritually he was a sinner. He had not kept the 
law of righteousness. Most men had not even tried 
to keep it. They had scoffed at it, and treated it 
with contempt and disdain. When death came near, 


THE STING OF DEATH. I4I 

and conscience began to accuse, this despised law 
written in the nature, written on the heart, written 
on the two tables of stone, began to force itself into 
recognition, and the more men had consciously 
broken it, the more terrible death was to them. 
Thus the law used by the conscience became the 
power of sin. The law did not create sin. It only 
revealed its sinfulness. How ? In this way : When 
by the side of a crooked line you draw a straight 
one, how the crookedness of the crooked line ap¬ 
pears ! When by the side of an inferior painting 
you put a finished artist’s work, how the inferiority 
of the one is emphasized! In the same way all 
excellency makes inferiority appear what it is. 
Unrighteousness has an excuse for itself until right¬ 
eousness is put alongside it. When the moral law 
of God was issued, how sinful the life of the Jewish 
people appeared, — how depraved that heathen life 
all around them ! And so says the Apostle, “ by 
the law was the knowledge of sin.” Not sin, but 
the knowledge of it. The conscience took the law 
of God and made it live in the soul of the dying 
man; and thus the sense of sin was aggravated by 
the existence of the law with its unrelenting frown. 
That, in brief, is what the Apostle means when he 
says “the power of sin is the law.” 

But he does not stop at that. Pictured before his 


142 


THROUGH DEATH TO LIFE. 


mind is One who comes to rescue man from the 
lashings of conscience — from the thunderings of 
law. In the very language which the Apostle uses, 
a vivid but sanctified imagination is at work. He 
sees a man battling with his own conscience, and 
battling with law; he sees a man in presence of 
Mount Sinai, when the moral law of God was given 
and there were lightnings and thunderings; he sees 
a man wrapped in the folds of the angry tempest, 
cowed, conscience-stricken, terrified. Then he sees 
another, stronger and mightier than he, haste to his 
rescue, and, delivering him from the angry storm and 
blinding tempest, take him to a place of refuge, 
soothe him and care for him, speaking peace to his 
perturbed soul, and thus awakening love in his flut¬ 
tering heart. Then the Apostle breaks out into 
jubilant praise, “But thanks be to God which 
giveth us the victory, through our Lord Jesus 
Christ.” This is the crowning thought; this is the 
consummation of the life that begins in ignorance — 
a mere seed sown — developed through the discipline 
of suffering and trial, yielding to sin, sorrowing for 
sin, battling with sin, eventually seized upon by 
death — a life which on the outside seems so much 
of a mystery; a problem so insoluble; an existence 
for which there is no adequate cause or reason; a 
struggle and a defeat. That is how it looks on the 


THE STING OF DEATH. 


143 


outside; but when we get to the inside of it, as by 
the help of this Apostle we do in this chapter, the 
darkness is shot through with light; the problem 
begins to be workable; the mystery bfegins to write 
itself in language that we can decipher. Sin is not 
everything; punishment is not everything; the flesh 
is not everything; this mortal body is not every¬ 
thing ; law is not supreme; conscience is not su~ 
preme. For in the very act of dying, when defeat 
seems certain and inevitable,—when the man can 
no longer hold out against the forces that threaten 
him, — when his own strength seems entirely and 
finally failing, — then it is that the Apostle shouts 
his paean of victory, “Thanks be unto God who 
giveth us the victory, through our Lord Jesus 
Christ.” 

Let us not miss a word in this passage. It is 
victory not won, but given. It is victory not earned, 
not deserved, not accomplished, but given. Sin is 
in the man. Conscience is lashing him. Death’s 
maw is open to receive him. He is in extremity. 
He can do nothing. He can fight no longer. The 
struggle is over. He has no power left. It is then, 
then , — even then, — in the very hour of seeming 
defeat, that the exulting voice is heard, “ Thanks be 
unto God who giveth us the victory, through our 
Lord Jesus Christ.” 


144 


THROUGH DEATH TO LIFE. 


Now, if the victory comes through our Lord Jesus 
Christ, through his relation to us and our relation to 
him, what in the world have we to do with any form 
or kind of theologic teaching which does not make of 
Jesus Christ all that the New Testament makes of 
him ? Sin is a fact, death is a fact, conscience is a 
fact, law is a fact. In all these facts, work them 
together how you will, there is no gospel. One man 
says to me, “Be conscientious.” There is no gospel 
in that. Another says, “ Comply with the moral 
law — be moral.” There is no gospel in that. An¬ 
other reminds me that I am a sinner, and that I must 
die. There is no gospel in that. Turn about these 
thoughts as you will, in any order you will; keep 
travelling within the area of these four facts—sin, 
death, conscience, law; keep inside them; do not 
get outside them — there is no gospel in that area. 
Never until we add, “victory, through our Lord Jesus 
Christ,” do we find the storm abating, the winds 
lulled into peace, the thunders moderating their 
tone till they become zephyrs, whispering quiet into 
the soul; never till we add, “ victory, through our 
Lord Jesus Christ,” does the conscience approve; 
never till then does the law of life become the law 
of love. 


X. 


CERTAIN REWARD. 


“ If materialism is the scourge of society, religion is its saviour; 
if the one desolates the heart, the other soothes and strengthens 
it.” — Louis Figuier. 


“ I would cut off my own head if it had nothing better in it 
but wit; and tear out my own heart if had no better disposition 
than to love only myself and laugh at all my neighbors.” — Pope. 

“ Let us do good without hope of recompense ; let us fulfil our 
duty without ostentation; and our name will live among people 
of worth.” — Frederick the Great. 


X. 


CERTAIN REWARD. 


I Cor. xv. 58. — Wherefore, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast, 
unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch 
as ye know that your labor is not vain in the Lord. 

The first word of this passage is a connective: 
“Wherefore ” —- taking these facts and truths —these 
reasonings and arguings from the relations which 
have come to us in Christ Jesus our Lord,—“where¬ 
fore, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast, unmovea¬ 
ble, always abounding in the work of the Lord, foras¬ 
much as ye know that your labor is not vain in the 
Lord.” This is the practical application of the whole 
truth of this fifteenth chapter, the practical applica¬ 
tion so far as it can be brought within the conditions 
of time and space. 

The Christian disciple is in the world; he is not 
taken hence as soon as his discipleship begins. He 
is left here with a new and higher relationship to the 
world in which he lives. Every new truth means a 
new work. No truth is given to a man to be hoarded 
by him. Everything is for support and for use. One 


148 


THROUGH DEATH TO LIFE. 


reason, I verily believe, why many are always learn¬ 
ing and never coming to a knowledge of the truth, is, 
that they have no set intent and purpose to use 
truth, to employ it, to make it practical and opera¬ 
tive. They want it for comfort simply. They want 
it for a bed to lie on; for a pillow on which to 
recline a somnolent brain ; not to enlighten and di¬ 
rect them along the road of duty and benevolence. 
Does it not seem to us improbable that the spirit of 
God would ever give men light simply for speculative 
and controversial purposes ? If we do not need God’s 
truth for the legitimate purposes of our everyday life, 
is it not best that we should be without it ? More¬ 
over, the use of a truth seems to be necessary to our 
really knowing it. The condition of knowing what 
the teaching of Christ is seems to be willingness to 
do the Divine Will. “ He that doeth the will shall 
know of the teaching, whether it be of God.” 

There are three leading ideas in this text of ours, 
and they may be indicated by the three words, Rest¬ 
fulness, Activity, Confidence. As we read this utter¬ 
ance of the Apostle’s, it brings to our memory the 
old words, “In returning and rest shall ye be saved; 
in quietness and confidence shall be your strength.” 
In every life there needs to be a restful centre if 
there is to be a wise and well-ordered activity. The 


CERTAIN REWARD. 


149 


ocean itself could not bring back into quiet and order 
its foaming waves, lashed into anger by the roaring 
hurricane, if it had not a deep peace underneath — a 
peace never disturbed by the loudest and most turbu¬ 
lent tempest. I know of nothing in our own day 
more painfully and surely indicative of the interior 
wrongness of our life than the inability everywhere 
manifest to rest and be quiet. No life was ever 
healthy and strong in which there was not a central 
rest, and something to feed and support that rest. 
But in our day the question “ what shall I do next ? ” 
is asked before we have well finished that which went 
before. And so, much of our activity is blind and 
purposeless. It is merely wasting and consuming 
time. There is no virtue in it, and no intelligence in 
it; consequently no profit. Life does not become 
purified, or strengthened, or enriched, or made happier 
thereby. It is simply squandered. Now, all this is 
not simply wrong; it is foolish. It is not simply 
harmless activity; it is the activity that comes from 
internal hollowness of nature. We congratulate our¬ 
selves on being the most “ alive ” people in the 
world — which means in plain English, the most rest¬ 
less. But mere restlessness has no inherent virtue 
or goodness in it. It simply denotes the possession 
of vitality, which vitality may be altogether unedu¬ 
cated and untrained. 


150 THROUGH DEATH TO LIFE. 

In every useful life there must be internal rest. 
There must be something believed in so firmly and 
so continuously that it holds to itself the mind and 
heart. Therefore it is that the Apostle says, “ Be ye 
steadfast, unmoveable.” Consider who it is gives 
utterance to these words. It is the man of all others 
most intensely active, the Apostle who was here, 
there, and everywhere in the Roman world. But his 
activity was all of a piece. It was animated by a 
single purpose, — that of making known to men the 
truth that had come to us in Christ Jesus. In that 
he rested. He was steadfast and immovable in 
regard to that. This man had no doubts that Jesus 
was the Messiah, the unique Son of God, the Re¬ 
deemer of Man, God’s great light sent into the world. 
You cannot find in all Paul’s writings any evidence 
of unsettledness on the character and claims of Jesus 
of Nazareth. Steadfastly and immovably he was 
fixed to that centre. Everywhere in his letters he 
assumes that man is so made constitutionally that 
this Jesus Christ is pre-adapted to him. 

When the Eternal Father gave us Jesus Christ, he 
gave us one who is pre-harmonized to our necessities. 
When the heart rests in him, it rests finally. When 
the mind rests in him, it rests as the astronomer 
rests who has found his sun. When once Coperni¬ 
cus got the sun at the centre, it forever remained 


CERTAIN REWARD. 


151 

there. Though the prejudice and bigotry of his day 
said he was wrong, he knew that he was right. In 
our day nothing needs to be uttered more dogmati¬ 
cally and with more earnestness than this: that for 
every heart and mind there must be a centre of affec¬ 
tion ; a centre of light to which we can look, always 
and ever, without doubt and fear, without vacillation 
and variableness. Does it seem to you possible that 
there should be in us the necessity for some One 
who can be to us a resting-place for mind and heart, 
and no one to meet that necessity ? Wherever you 
find hunger, you find food ; wherever you find intel¬ 
ligence, you find objects which appeal to it; wher¬ 
ever you find the sense of beauty, you find scenes 
that are lovely and beautiful to meet and feed and 
gratify that sense — and so of all other senses and 
faculties. Every sense has its food suited to it. In 
our nature there is a craving for some steadfast and 
abiding centre of life on which we can rest, towards 
which we can turn and say, “ That centre remains 
the centre; that abides; I can fix my mind on it; I 
can fix my heart on it.” God knows we need such a 
centre. Our nature has developed the need. The 
Romanist system supplies an infallible Pope. That 
system has grown out of this deep need. It seems 
to us, however, that infallibility does not belong to 
any sinful creature, nor to any number of sinful 


52 


THROUGH DEATH TO LIFE. 


creatures in conclave or council assembled. No 
prophet or apostle claims infallibility, and yet the 
infallible centre is needed. We have it in Christ 
Jesus. According to the apostolic testimony, he is 
the same yesterday, to-day, and forever. He is 
God’s answer to our need. There is no reason 
or sense in St. Paul’s urging us to be steadfast 
and unmovable, unless we have a steadfast and 
unmovable centre on which to rest our affection and 
trust. 

The more I think about it, the deeper is my per¬ 
suasion that, in these days of ours, it is more than 
unwise to put anything on the level of the authority 
which, in the constitution of things, Christ has over 
the human soul. Creeds have their place and their 
use, but they are human compilations. They are 
liable to err in putting the emphasis on the wrong 
word, and also in stating in the fixed and unelastic 
language of man that which belongs to the luminous 
and eternal thought of God. All commentaries, ser¬ 
mons, expositions, are man’s fallible work. They 
stand or fall like anything else of man’s. At best 
they are helps — never of the nature of authority 
that may not be disputed or questioned. There is 
but one Lord — Jesus the Christ; one faith—faith 
in him; one baptism — the baptism of the Holy 
Spirit; one God and Father of all, who is above all, 


CERTAIN REWARD. 


153 


and through all, and in you all. We do not lack in¬ 
fallibility. In all things where infallibility is possible 
and essential we have it in our Jesus, God’s Christ. 
This explains why the Apostle Paul was so tremen¬ 
dously dogmatic in some things, and so accommodat¬ 
ing in others. In this very epistle he says, “ If any 
man loveth not the Lord, let him be Anathema.” 

And yet, in another place he says, “To the Jews I 
became as a Jew, that I might gain the Jews; to 
them that are without law as without law, — I became 
all things to all men, if by any means I might save 
some.” What are we to make of this man? How 
do you explain this doubleness ? Only on the prin¬ 
ciple that the facts about Jesus the Christ, his rela¬ 
tion to God and man, are of another kind and order 
from any human arrangements, or opinions, or inter¬ 
pretations. There is nothing that has dishonored 
Christ more than the elevating of matters of opinion 
to the level of dogmatic Christian truth. It has 
produced schism upon schism. It has divided the 
Church. It has mystified the minds of men. It 
has developed the worst types of the irreligious 
spirit. It has made infidels by hundreds and thou¬ 
sands. There is One, and One only, who, because 
of his elevation in nature, in purpose, in work, in 
achievement, is the Infallible Centre of a Christian’s 
trust and hope. Concerning him and the facts of 


154 


THROUGH DEATH TO LIFE. 


his life, “Be ye steadfast, steadfast; yes, so stead¬ 
fast that ye are positively and absolutely immov¬ 
able.” In him rest. 

When you have attained to that rest, then your 
activity will have a limit, a direction, and an aim. 
The area within which you can exercise yourself is 
large enough for the employment of all your facul¬ 
ties. What heartiness there is in these words, “ Always 
abounding in the work of the Lord ! ” How you feel 
the man of Tarsus in them! As to time, we are to 
do the work of the Lord always. As to quantity, we 
are to abound in it. As to the kind of work, it is to 
be the work of the Lord. There is room enough 
here for every one who has the true Christian spirit. 
There is room for every kind of work that a man can 
do, feeling, while he is doing it, “ I can ask God’s 
blessing on my work.” 

We must not limit the work of the Lord to that 
which is strictly ecclesiastical. Everything which 
does good to the bodies, minds, souls of men is the 
work of the Lord. We are in God’s world. As 
disciples of Christ, we have rights here which are 
indisputable. In the light of the truth which the 
Apostle brings before us in this chapter, we can dis¬ 
cern that everything which recognizes man as moving 
onward towards the realization of a nobler inward 
and outward condition than that to which he has 


CERTAIN REWARD. 


155 


already attained, is work of the Lord. In the light of 
the truth which fills this chapter, and considering 
that it is addressed to Christian disciples, we may 
infer that the tendency of this truth of man’s escape 
through death into life is to promote activity in the 
work of the Lord. Yea, I am persuaded that if we 
could only get the truth of this great argument into 
our souls, it would give us such rest of heart, and 
such energy of life, that we should know how neces¬ 
sary rest of heart is to labor, and see that the willing 
activity of hopeful, vigorous Christians is the sign 
and proof of the deep peace they have within. There 
are in the Church of Christ those who, by reason 
of physical decrepitude, have ever to remind them¬ 
selves of Milton’s splendid line, “They also serve 
who only stand and wait.” But does it not seem to 
you that some form of Christian service is sure to 
follow a vigorous inward faith ? Oh, I wish it were 
possible to believe that there are no men and women, 
of a Christianized sort, who are ever seeking for types 
of religion which, without rebuke, will allow them to 
spend far more time and money in providing trivial 
and foolish entertainments for themselves than they 
ever spend in the work of the Lord. It was in view 
of this class of persons, — persons who even ask, 
“How near may I go to being everything, and doing 
everything that a respectable non-Christian person 


156 


THROUGH DEATH TO LIFE. 


does, and yet not lose my Christianity altogether ? ” 
— in view of this class of persons, that Dr. John 
Henry Newman uttered that celebrated sentence: 
“ I will not shrink from uttering my firm conviction 
that it would be a gain to this country were it vastly 
more superstitious, more bigoted, more gloomy, more 
fierce in its religion than at present it shows itself to 
be. Not, of course, that I think the tempers of mind 
herein implied desirable, which would be an evident 
absurdity, but I think them infinitely more desirable 
and more promising than a heathen obduracy, and a 
cold, self-sufficient, self-wise indifference.” Of course, 
in order to do the work of the Lord, a man must 
believe in the Lord with a different kind of belief 
from that which merely assents, in the sense of not 
caring to dispute the matter. He must believe, also, 
in the view of man’s nature, and of what is before it, 
which the Apostle gives us in this chapter. A man 
who cannot stand upright cannot, of course, walk—- 
much less, run. And a man whose faith has no 
backbone in it can do nothing but crawl, or float 
about, to and fro, like a jelly-fish with the advancing 
and receding tide. If a church is to abound in the 
work of the Lord, it must be a church of men and 
women (yes; and children, for I dare not think of 
them as outsiders) who are mentally and affection- 
ally alive. Such a church needs to be fed with 


CERTAIN REWARD. 


157 


“strong meat” for men, as well as with “milk” for 
babes. A healthy man, full of life, has a good appe¬ 
tite for strong food. That will give him exuberance 
of life. Activity he must have; he must work at 
something. So is it mentally: fill a man’s mind with 
truth, — such truth as has come to us in Jesus Christ, 
such truth as St. Paul has put into this chapter, — 
and the receiver of that truth will want to incorpo¬ 
rate it in some way. No truth is adequately appre¬ 
hended until it creates inward energy. Truth acts 
on the mind precisely as material food acts oh the 
body. It either creates warmth and energy, or it 
creates indigestion. I think that there can be no 
doubt that good, solid Biblical truth, — such as Jesus 
taught, such as Paul preached, — does not agree with 
some constitutions. There is such a condition as 
that of mental and spiritual indigestion. In that 
case the food is not at fault, but the digestion is 
impaired. Let man, woman, or child try to satisfy 
the cravings of appetite on candies and ice-creams — 
what then ? The digestive apparatus will become so 
impaired that it cannot assimilate the nutritive ele¬ 
ments in solid food — so is it mentally; so is it spir¬ 
itually. There are whole congregations of men and 
women to be found who cannot assimilate Scripture 
truth. Their mental digestion has been ruined by 
the ice-cream of Rationalism, and the luscious con- 


158 


THROUGH DEATH TO LIFE. 


fections of an emotional and superstitious form of 
religion. St. Paul’s “ strong meat ” they cannot 
digest. But to those who can digest it, what nutri¬ 
ment there is in it! — what inward warmth it 
creates! what energy it generates! what varied 
activities ensue! — so that of such it may be said, 
“They are always abounding in the work of the 
Lord.” 

The third thought suggested by the Apostle’s 
words is that of confidence: “Forasmuch as ye know 
that your labor is not vain in the Lord.” Every 
one engaged in any department of the vineyard of the 
Lord needs, at some time or other, just these words. 
The Apostle himself had been seemingly defeated 
again and again. Yet he was always confident. 
It seems to me that he intended, in these words, 
to suggest to the mind of all Christian workers the 
idea that to work for the kingdom of God was cer¬ 
tain to be profitable with some kind of profit. A 
man working along the lines of a true Christian 
effort could never work in vain. Even when we 
seerri to be unsuccessful, — even when we seem to be 
defeated, — we are not working in vain. Has it never 
occurred to you that there was a divine mercifulness in 
what has been sometimes phrased the “ non-success ” 
of our Lord’s ministry? At the end of his earthly 


CERTAIN REWARD. 


159 


life there was nothing to show but a small band of 
followers — all but all of them poor, working men. 
The end of his earth-life seemed defeat, —and defeat 
of the most odious kind. Nothing for him but the 
Cross. Yet that defeat, as we now see it, was the 
most splendid victory. Christianity would lack its 
most pathetic element if the Cross were not in it. 

It would lack that revelation which most tenderly 
appeals to the heart of man. And there are hun¬ 
dreds of men who, in doing the work of the Lord, 
have seemed to be defeated. In doing it, they have . 
had to bear a heavy cross. I believe that when 
that light of Eternity, which shall search men and 
movements to their centre, shall be poured around 
the deeds of men, there will be revelations, not a 
few, showing that seeming defeat has, in the judg¬ 
ment of the Master, been victory. “ He who never 
breaks the bruised reed,” he who “never quenches 
the smoking flax,” will show that the work about 
which we have been most discouraged has not been 
“vain in the Lord.” Anyway, I prefer to credit 
the great Apostle when he affirms, “Forasmuch as 
ye know that your labor is not vain in the Lord.” 
With the New Testament in my hand, I cannot be¬ 
lieve in some of our methods of estimating the value 
of church work. Arithmetical figures can never 
express spiritual results. The hysteric efforts to 


i6o 


THROUGH DEATH TO LIFE. 


make “a good showing” before the world, or even 
before the churches, are not endorsed by anything 
that I can find in the New Testament. There is a 
commercial side to church life which needs conse¬ 
crated commercial faculty to perform it. But we 
cannot introduce the spirit of ecclesiastical competi¬ 
tion into our church life without lowering our spirit¬ 
ual tone. When any of us work for the approval and 
applause of men, rather than out of a feeling of ser¬ 
vice to God, we shall have our reward, but it will 
never satisfy us; steadily it will disappoint us, and 
eventually we shall give up our work. 

But if, seeing the excellency of Christian work as 
well as its necessity, we are willing to take our place, 
any place that seems to need us, we act in the spirit 
of that saintly soul who sang: — 

“ Dismiss me not thy service, Lord, 

But train me to thy will; 

For even I, in fields so broad, 

Some duty may fulfil; 

And I will ask for no reward 
Except to serve thee still.” 

If in that spirit we take our place, choose our work, 
and do it, then we have a right to believe that our 
labor shall not be in vain in the Lord. God will be 
glorified; into ourselves there will come a character 
which shall adapt us to the next stage of life, and 


CERTAIN REWARD. 


161 


other souls will inevitably be impressed and influenced. 
Our feelings mislead us. Our views of God’s work 
and of our own nature are short-sighted. Let us 
trust the divine word that has come to us through 
one of the noblest men who ever lived. Remember¬ 
ing the greatest of historical facts so abundantly at¬ 
tested by so many witnesses — remembering that 
there is no sufficient reason for Paul’s heroic life, 
except that he gives himself; that the risen Lord met 
and called him into apostleship — remembering that 
our Lord’s own life is the root out of which all other 
consecrated Christian lives have grown — remember¬ 
ing that in his keeping are they who have fallen 
asleep ; that they have a conscious personal existence 
still — remembering that our Lord is exalted to put 
down all rule and all authority and power that is an¬ 
tagonistic to man’s welfare — remembering that this 
life of ours is only a life introductory and preliminary 
to the true and full human life, which God designed 
for us, when he said, “ Let us make man in our image, 
after our likeness” — remembering that flesh and 
blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God; that there 
is first a natural body suited to earth, and then a 
spiritual body suited to the Paradise beyond — re¬ 
membering that as we have borne the image of the 
earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly; 
that this corruption must put on incorruption, and 


1 62 THROUGH DEATH TO LIFE. 

this mortal must put on Immortality ; — remembering 
all this, then death has lost its sting; the grave has 
lost its victory. Death is the portal to sinlessness, 
to the glad, free health of Paradise, to nobler mental 
and spiritual conditions. Remembering that it is 
not a continuation simply of this poor, stained, feeble 
life we are promised, but that we shall all be changed 
— remembering also that this eternal life is not some¬ 
thing earned, or something deserved, or something 
won, but that the victory is given through our Lord 
Jesus Christ; — remembering these great and glori¬ 
ous facts and truths, “ Wherefore, my beloved breth¬ 
ren, be ye steadfast, unmoveable, always abounding 
in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that 
your labor is not vain in the Lord.” 

I have now travelled with you along the route 
which the Apostle has macadamized to our tread. 
My aim was to try to enrich your Christain thought 
and illumine your Christian hope. I have consulted 
everything I could lay my hands on to verify the 
meaning of every important word in every sentence. 
I have given you only the results, never the pro¬ 
cesses. More and more I look upon the Christian 
minister as an interpreter. His business is to get, 
by processes sometimes laborious and long-continued, 
at the exact meaning of the Scriptures, and preach 
that which he finds there. Consequently, a minister 


CERTAIN REWARD. 


163 


who is faithful to the Scriptures can never preach 
simply as a denominationalist. The moment a pul¬ 
pit becomes denominational in its teaching, it neces¬ 
sarily becomes partial and defective. It cannot be 
honestly scriptural. May God grant that by the help 
of the truth which this great servant of God has 
brought to us, we may be able to look forward even 
hopefully to that great change which shall separate 
us from our present limited and depraved conditions, 
and introduce us into a purer, freer, nobler, larger 
life, where the light and love of God shall lift the 
soul into a beatitude which shall be an Eternal Te 
Deum : — 

“Thanks be unto God which giveth us the 

VICTORY, THROUGH OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST.” 


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INTRODUCTION 

TO THE BOOKS OF THE 


OLD TESTAMENT, 

With Analyses and Numerous References to Illustrative Literature, 
BY O. S. STEARNS, D.D., 

Professor of Biblical Interpretation in Newton Theological Institution. 

12mo. Cloth. - - Price, $1.00. 

A BOOK FOR ETERI READER AND STUDENT OF THE BIBLE. 


E VERY careful reader of the Old Testament must answer for each book 
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Who wrote it ? In what age of the world was it written ? Why was it 
written just at that time? What is the central thought in the book, and 
how is it tmfolded? 

This book attempts to answer these questions candidly and briefly. 

It aims to give a bird’s-eye view of the ruling thought of each book of 
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The Social Influence of Christianity, 

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By DAVID J. HILL, LL.D., President of Rochester Univ. 


THE NEWTON LECTURES FOR 1887. 

231 pp. Full cloth. Gilt. Price, $1.25. 


T HIS volume presents a clear and vigorous discussion of the great 
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Christianity. Ten years of experience as a teacher of economics and 
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truly scientific manner, and his extended travel in Europe for the purpose 
of gathering materials for this work has enriched his knowledge of the 
contemporary condition of society with the fruits of observation. After a 
more general treatment, the social relation of Christianity, considered as 
the influence of Jesus Christ, is elaborated in a brief, clear, and conclusive 
manner with reference to the contemporary problems of Labor, Wealth, 
Marriage, Education, Legislation, and the Repression of Crime. No other 
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from a prevailingly ethical point of view. It should find a place in the 
library of every thoughtful reader and student. 


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Ethical Principles Discussed and Applied. 


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